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Annals of St. Michael’s 


Being the History of St. Michael’s Protestant 
Episcopal Church, New York, for 


One Hundred Years 
1807-1907 


Compiled by Order of the Vestry 


Edited by 


John Punnett Peters, D.D. 


Illustrated 


G. P. Putnam’s Sons 
New York and London 


The Knickerbocker Press 
1907 


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CopyRIGHT, 1907 
BY 
JOHN P, PETERS 


The ‘Knickerbocker Press, Hew Work 


‘ 


PREFACE 


OMMISSIONED by the Vestry to prepare a brief 

9 volume on the history of St. Michael’s Church, 
in connection with the centenary of the parish, 

I have far overstepped the boundaries of brevity in 
this present work. My plea for pardon or at least sus- 
pension of sentence is the interest of the theme. The 
history of St. Michael’s is intimately connected with 
the history and development, material, mental, and 
spiritual of the entire upper part of Manhattan Island. 
It was impossible to tell the story of the church without 
telling the story of the old families that built it, the 
old houses in which they lived, and the gradual changes 
through which the people and their homes have passed 
in the hundred years of the church’s life. It was St. 
Michael’s Church, its rectors, wardens, and vestrymen, 
who concerned themselves in the making of the new 
city on the West Side, with its schools and hospitals, 
its parks and playgrounds, its churches and asylums, 
its libraries and its transit facilities. The history of 
all these things is inextricably interwoven with the 
history of St. Michael’s. She is the mother of a dozen 
churches, and almost as many institutions. Their 
story is a part of her history. The work of the Church 
among the miserable and abandoned in the hospitals, 
asylums, almshouses, and_ prisons, the work of the 
Church in the slums, the rescue work for fallen women 
and forsaken children,—these began in St. Michael’s. 
From her went forth the first free church; she first 


iii 


iv Preface 


provided Christian burial for the poor. Here the 
first and greatest of our sisterhoods was founded; her 
Charity School became the first Public School of the 
West Side; she sent her rectors as missionaries to 
Oregon, Turkey, and Five Points; she entered the courts 
to fight powerful railroad corporations to protect the, 
people’s rights. Surely it is a tale worth telling, and 
worth taking the time and space to tell. Some of her 
rectors, too, have been, not only men of mark in the 
Church and the community, but men the story of 
whose lives is both interesting and profitable. One 
was the most famous scholar of the Church in his day, 
another a pioneer in missions, another a preaching 
friar, a firebrand of freedom, another a wise and 
prophetic organizer, whose organizations have made 
their impress on the whole Church. Of these men and 
their work this book tells the story. 

I must return thanks to the Vestry, who authorized 
the publication of this volume; the members of St. 
Michael’s staff, who have given me such ungrudging 
and unselfish aid; the parishioners and old parishioners 
and the descendants of still older parishioners who 
have communicated to me their recollections and their 
family traditions, and helped me to procure both facts 
and illustrations; and last but not least to the pub- 
lishers who have co-operated with me to deliver on 
time a book, worthy in appearance, I trust, of its theme, 
bearing with the vagaries and shortcomings of an 
editor who always, at the last moment, found more 
things to be told, ‘‘ wanting to deliver his manuscript 
to-morrow, and receive his book printed and bound 
yesterday.”’ 


Joun P. PETERS. 
St. MicHAEL’s CuurcH, New York, 
Michaelmas, 1907. 


CONTENTS 


PART I 


THE STORY OF ST. MICHAEL’S PARISH AND 
NEIGHBORHOOD 


CHAPTER I 


PAGES 
Old Bloomingdale: Its appearance; How the Yellow Fever 
Caused the Building of Two Churches; The Foundation 
of St. Michael’s; The First Trustees, Vestrymen, and 
Pewholders, and Something about them, their Homes, 
and their Times : : : ; P P 4 gene) 


CHAPTER II 


A Record of the Growth and Development of the Church and 
Neighborhood, with Reference to Happenings Political, 
Economical, and Social, to the Close of Rev. Dr. Jarvis’s 
Rectorship, in 1820 . : : : : : 19-44 


CHAPTER III 


Covers the First Rectorship of the Rev. William Richmond 
and the Rectorship of the Rev. James Cook Richmond, 
1820-1842, Including also the History of St. Michael’s 
Charity School . : : : : 3 s 45-78 


CHAPTER IV 


The Second Rectorship of Rev. William Richmond, 1842-1858, 
with Some Account of the Strange Wilderness which Be- 
cameCentralPark . : 3 : 2 : 79-107 


CHAPTER V 


Old Bloomingdale and its Passing: sakes a cae of Interest 


to Antiquarians only . : : : 108-127 
Vv 


vi Contents 


CHAPTER VI PAGES 


Covers the Rectorship of Rev. Thomas McClure Peters, 
1858-1893; and Tells the Story of the Second Church 
with a Sketch of the Manner in which Bloomingdale was 
Swallowed up in the Great City . : ; : 128-176 


CHAPTER VII 


The Third Church: Telling the Story of the Present Rectorate, 
with Some Account of the Decoration of the Church, the 
Building of the Parish House, and the Development of 
Sociological and Neighborhood Activities in the Parish; 
and Including the Famous Amsterdam Avenue Fight 177-224 


PART II 


LIVES OF THE RECTORS OF ST. MICHAEL’S 
CHURCH 


CHAPTER VIII 


First Rector, Rev. John Vanderbilt Bartow, 1808-1810 . 227-229 


CHAPTER IX 
Second Rector, Rev. Samuel Farmar Jarvis, 1810-1820 230-233 
CHAPTER X 
Third Rector, Rev. William Richmond, oon 1842-— 
1858 : : : : ; c - 234-256 
CHAPTER XI 


Fourth Rector, Rev. James Cook Richmond, 1837-1842 257-278 
CHAPTER XII 
Fifth Rector, Rev. Thomas McClure Peters, 1858-1893 . 279-361 


CHAPTER XIII 


Sixth Rector. Rev. John Punnett Peters, 1893 é <) 02-273 


Contents Vil 


PART Wit 


CHURCHES AND INSTITUTIONS FOUNDED 
WHOLLY OR IN PART THROUGH 
ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH 


CHAPTER XIV PAGES 


Churches: I. St. Mary’s, Manhattanville. II. St. Ann’s, Fort 
Washington. III. St. Matthew’s, Yorkville. IV. St. 
Andrew’s, Harlem. V. All Angels’. VI. St. Timothy’s. 

VII. Bethlehem Chapel. VIII. Church of the Archangel. 
IX. Trinity Church. Portland, Oregon . : - 377-409 


CHAPTER XV 


Institutions: I. The New York Protestant Episcopal City 
Mission Society. II. House of Mercy. III. St. Bar- 
nabas’s House and Midnight Mission. IV. New York 
Infant Asylum. V. The Sheltering Arms. VI. Sisterhood 
of St. Mary. VII. Bloomingdale Clinic. VIII. Blooming- 
dale Day Nursery. IX. Bloomingdale Free Circulating 
Library. X. Neighborhood Social and Industrial Club. 

XI. Bloomingdale District Nurse Association - 410-437 


CHAPTER XVI 


St. Michael’s Cemetery: St. Michael’s Churchyard; Old 
Burying Ground for Poor; New Burying Ground in 


Central Park; Cemetery in Astoria : s 438-459 
APPENDICES 
A. List of Original Pewholders ; : : 5 AGE 
B. List of Wardens of St. Michael’s ONnOe ; E 2) 4.63 
C. Vestrymen of St Michael’s Church : : - 464 
D. Secretaries or Clerks of Vestry . ; : F - 465 
E. Treasurers : : : : Z BAGO 
F. Clergy of St. Michael’ s Pani ; F ‘ . 466 
G. Various Officials of St. Michael’s Church : : 1) 467, 
H. Vital Statistics of the Parish p ; 468 
I. Delegates to the Diocesan Conventions Repicsoneme 
St. Michael’s Parish : F : : : ou Ae 


INDEX : é d F : : . : ; 475 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 
“THERE WAS WARIN HEAVEN.”’ CHANCBL WINDOWS 


oF St. MICHAEL’s . i i . Frontispiece 
THE Rt. Rev. BENJAMIN Moorgz, S. T. D., Con- 
SECRATOR OF First St. MIcHAEL’s CHURCH P 6 


FivE ORIGINAL PEWHOLDERS oF St. MICHAEL’S 
CHURCH: FREDERICK DEPEYSTER, PETER SCHER- 
MERHORN, JACOB SCHIEFFELIN, BARON JOHN 
CoRNELIUS VANDENHEUVEL, OLIVERH. Hicks . 12 


Tue First CHuRCH, CONSECRATED JULY 27,1807 . 20 


Two CLERKS OF THE VESTRY: 1. FREDERICK DE- 
PEYSTER, JR., 1825-1839; 2. Dr. A.V. WILLIAMS 
1841-1862. . : : : : : A 80 


Rr. Rev. Horatio Potter, D.D., D.C.L., Conss- 
CRATOR OF SECOND CuuRCcH Nov. 25, 1854 i) Loz 


THE WEYMAN PiAcE: 1. FRONT VIEW OF HOUSE; 2. 
View oF RIVER FROM HOUSE . : : TELOS 


Two Otp Mansions. 1. ELMWooD, THE APTHORPE 
AND JAUNCEY HoMESTEAD; 2. BURNHAM HOTEL, 
FoRMERLY BARON VANDENHEUVEL’S COUNTRY 
HoME . 4 4 : : : F MD Nice ae 


FREDERICK DEPEYSTER House. ON SITE OF PREs- 
ENT St. LUKE’s HOSPITAL f : ‘ Ai) aeaK(9) 


THE SECOND CHURCH, ABOUT 1860 F : . 128 


ix 


x Illustrations 


PERIOD OF TRANSITION: CUTTING THROUGH OF 94TH 
STREET, SHOWING OLD BARN AND HOUSE ON 


Mott LANE 


TuE SECOND CHURCH, AFTER THE CLOSING OF BLOOM- 
INGDALE ROAD AND THE OPENING OF TENTH AVE- 
NUE, ABOUT 1880 . : 


INTERIOR OF SECOND CHURCH, ABOUT 1880 


Two TREASURERS OF ST. MICHAEL’S: 1. JAMES FER- 
GuUSON DEPEYSTER, 1818-1874; 2. WILLIAM 
RICHMOND PETERS, 1874- 


BUILDING OF THIRD CHuRcH. LycrEum HALL TO LEFT; 
SECOND CHURCH BEHIND 


Rt. Rev. H. C. Potter, D.D., D.C.L., ConsEcRAToR 
oF THIRD CHURCH . 


THE THIRD CHURCH, CONSECRATED DEC. 15, 1891 


INTERIOR OF THIRD CHURCH, LooKkING TowarpD 
CHANCEL 


INTERIOR OF THIRD CHURCH: 1. CHAPEL OF THE 
ANGELS; 2. VIEW FROM CHANCEL . : . 


THe MemoriAL ParisH House. CoNsSECRATED ALL 
Saints Day, 1902 


ParisH HousE Work: 1. GIRLS’ FRIENDLY SOCIETY; 
2. GYMNASIUM CLASS. : 4 : : 


St. MicHAEL’s CHOIR 


St. CEcILIA GUILD, SUNDAY SCHOOL AND SPECIAL 
CHOIR . : ‘ / : é : : 


Rev. JoHN VANDERBILT Bartow, First REcTorR, 
1808-1810 


PAGE 


144 


148 


152 


156 


162 


168 


176 


182 


184 


188 


192 


222 


224 


226 


Illustrations 


Rev. SAMUEL FarMAR JARVis, D.D., SEoonD REcToR, 
1810-1820 


Rey. WILLIAM RICHMOND, THIRD RECTOR, 1820-1837, 
1842-1858 


GARRIT VAN Horne Howse, Mr. Ricumonp’s “ ReEc- 
TORY.” «. REAR VIEW. 2. FRONT VIEW OF 
SAME AFTER OPENING OF BOULEVARD AND 94TH 
STREET 


Rey. JAMEs Cook RIcHMonD, FourtH REcTOoR, 1837- 
1842 


Rev. Tuomas McCiure Peters, S.T.D., Firru 
ReEcToR, 1858-1893 


House ForMERLY OccuPiED By Dr. A. V. WILLIAMs, 
IN PERIOD OF ‘TRANSITION, AFTER CUTTING 
THROUGH OF 95TH STREET ‘ 


Rey. JoHN Punnett Peters, D.D., S1xtH REcTor, 
1893- . : ; : : . . 


Looxinc NortTH FROM BLOOMINGDALE HEIGHTS: 
IN FOREGROUND, BLocK House or 1812 War; 
IN DISTANCE, CLAREMONT 


1. St. JAMES’s CHURCH, HAMILTON SQUARE. 2. ST. 
TimoTHy’s ParisH, HaAtFr A CENTURY SINCE. 
LooKING SOUTH FROM COLUMBUS CIRCLE . 


Tue Rectory or Dr. T. M. Peters. House 1n 
WHICH The SHELTERING ARMS Was FouNDED . 


THE PRESENT RECTORY. HOUSE IN WHICH BLOOM- 
INGDALE NURSERY WAS FOUNDED . F 


PAGE 


234 


244 


258 


278 


322 


362 


374 


400 


418 


426 


PART | 


THE STORY OF ST. MICHAEL'S PARISH 
AND NEIGHBORHOOD 


CHAPTER I 


Old Bloomingdale: Its Appearance; How the Yellow Fever Caused 
the Building of Two Churches; The Foundation of St. Mi- 
chael’s; The First Trustees, Vestrymen, and Pewholders, and 
Something about them, their Homes, and their Times. 


N Holland, near Haarlaem, lies the beautiful little 

| town of Bloemendael, always famous for its flowers. 
When the Dutch settled Manhattan Island they 
brought with them the names of their old home towns. 
New Amsterdam was the first settlement, at the lower 
extremity of the island, and then Haarlaem on the great 
plain in the northeastern part of Manhattan. In those 
days the shore line along the Hudson, or North River, 
was the most beautiful part of the island. The fiver 
bank rose in a bluff, at some places quite abruptly, 
at others sloping more gently, broken at irregular inter- 
vals by dales, through some of which streams ran down 
to the river, forming small bays. The shore of the river 
and the plateau above were originally heavily wooded, 
while the dales or valleys of the streams formed veri- 
table jungles, rich in flowers and vines. No wonder that, 
mindful of the beautiful flower town so near Haarlaem, 
the early settlers of Manhattan gave to this stretch 
of land along the Hudson River from Manhattanville 
southward the name of Bloomingdale. Irving, describ- 
ing this region as it existed toward the middle of the 


3 


4 Annals of St. Michael’s 


first half of the nineteenth century, gives a charming 
picture of one of these beautiful dales, but which, it 
is now impossible to determine, for there were several 
strikingly similar in their physical characteristics. 
So far as the description goes, it might have been 
Striker’s Bay valley, the last of these dales to preserve 
its identity, as it existed in my childhood. Here, 
a bay of some extent setin from the river, and down the 
wooded valley behind coursed a charming stream, which 
had its origin in a pond and springs in the neighbor- 
hood of ro4th Street, thence following in general the 
line of Broadway to 96th Street, where it turned down to 
the river. Even in my early manhood this valley was 
a natural wild-flower garden, and I remember no region 
where, in my botanical excursions, I used to find more 
varieties of wild flowers than here. There was still at 
that time another lesser bay about 89th Street, and 
a dale at 86th Street. Earlier other such dales existed 
all along the shore of the river, which grew lower the 
further one went southward. 

The name Bloomingdale in the earlier time applied 
to the whole district from 34th Street or a little below, 
northward to the top of the great hill at about 120th 
Street. Beyond this a deep depression cut the high- 
land in two, while a more considerable bay, called 
Harlem Cove, set in from the river. In the early part 
of the nineteenth century an attempt was made, by 
carrying a canal through this natural depression, to 
connect the East and North rivers, and sections of this 
canal still existed toward the middle of the century, in 
one of which a boy was drowned. Beyond Manhattan- 
ville were highlands similar to those below, only 
narrower and more rugged. 

There was no village or settlement of Bloomingdale, 


Bloomingdale Road 5 


the name applying originally merely to the district. 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century this region 
was occupied by the summer homes of well-to-do New 
Yorkers. The only means of communication with the 
city was the old Bloomingdale Road, which followed in 
general the present line of Broadway. Originally this 
road extended to 114th Street, where stood the house 
of Nicholas DePeyster, but toward the close of the 
eighteenth century it was continued onward down the 
great Manhattanville hill into the valley and up again 
for about a mile, until it formed a junction with the old 
Albany or Kingsbridge Road. During the War of 1812, 


_ as a defence against the British, a breastwork was 


thrown up along the edge of the high land above the 
Harlem plain and the Manhattanville valley, from 
river to river, while across the Bloomingdale Road, at 
the top of Manhattanville hill, a strong gate was erected 
which remained in position until the year 1824. From 
Bloomingdale Road private lanes, bearing the names of 
adjacent property owners, ran off right and left, giving 
access to the various country seats. Here and there 
one of these lanes found its way down to the river; 
or meandered across to the Post Road on the eastern 
edge of what is now Central Park. Many of these lanes 
still existed within my recollection. DePeyster, after- 
wards Asylum Lane, leaving Bloomingdale Road at 
t12th Street, ended at the bluff at 113th Street, 
above the Harlem plain; Goodever’s, afterwards 
Clendening Lane, starting at about 103d Street, 
slanted up to the high land at 1o5th Street and 8th 
Avenue, then zigzagged down to Harlem plain 
and the eastern Post Road below McGowan’s Pass; 
Apthorpe’s, afterwards Jauncey’s Lane, at 92d 
Street, formed a medium of communication between 


6 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Bloomingdale and southern Harlem; while Harsen 
Road, at 71st Street, led over to Hamilton Square and 
Yorkville. Among the more important lanes to the 
west of Bloomingdale Road were Kemble’s, afterwards 
Abbey Lane at 102d Street; Striker’s Bay Lane at 96th 
Street and Mott’s Lane just below 94th Street, both 
of which debouched finally at the river near g5th 
Street; and the Livingston or Waldo Lane at about 
gist Street. All of these were narrow country lanes, 
generally lined with trees. Altogether Bloomingdale 
was, even in my boyhood, when most of the old country 
places were already deserted or destroyed, a very rural 
and a very beautiful region. It must have been an 
earthly paradise in the still older time when it was 
a neighborhood of comfortable country houses, with 
their accompanying farms and gardens. 

Up to the year 1805 there were no churches between 
St. Mark’s in the Bowery and St. John’s, Yonkers. It 
was the prevalence of yellow fever to which may be 
ascribed primarily the provision for the spiritual needs 
of the population of the intervening territory. In the 
last years of the eighteenth and the first years of the 
nineteenth centuries, New York was repeatedly visited 
by epidemics of yellow fever. There are records of such 
epidemics in 1791, ’94, ’95, 97, 98, ’99, 1801, ’03, and 
’o5, and the mortality in proportion to the population 
was enormous. Business was seriously interfered with. 
All who could fled the city, at least during the summer 
months, the period of prevalence of the disease, and 
sought suburban homes. Men were even fearful of 
congregating for the prosecution of business. The banks 
were removed to Greenwich and their sojourn there is 
commemorated in the name Bank Street. Villages like 
Greenwich grew rapidly at the expense of the city 


THE RT. REV. BENJAMIN MOORE, S.T.D. 


Consecrator of First St. Michael’s Church, Bishop of New York, 1801-1816 


From a History of the Parish of Trinity Church by Rey. Dr. 
Morgan Dix. By permission of Trinity Corporation 


Organizing a Church 7 


proper. The Dutch Reformed Church, which was still 
at that period the leading denomination in the city, 
was the first to endeavor to meet the new situation, 
establishing a church in Greenwich village in 1803. 
Two years later steps were taken to provide a church 
for the more scattered population farther northward, 
the result of which was the formation and incorporation 
of the Bloomingdale Reformed Church in 1806, origi- 
nally located at 69th Street and Broadway, but now, 
after several removals, occupying a site on Blooming- 
dale Square, 107th Street and Broadway. At about 
the same time a number of gentlemen living somewhat 
farther northward organized for the purpose of erecting 
an Episcopal church. Money was collected, and, in 
1806, Trinity, where most of the organizers of the 
proposed church were regular worshippers, promised 
$2000 if, and when, a church building should be erected. 
Three trustees were appointed to hold the property until 
a church should be built: Robert T. Kemble, William 
Rodgers, and William Jauncey. A plot of land 150 feet 
by 75 just north of 99th Street, and east of the Bloom- 
ingdale Road, beautifully situated above the valley of 
the little stream which emptied into Striker’s Bay, was 
deeded to these trustees by a prominent merchant of 
New York, Oliver H. Hicks and Julia his wife, in con- 
sideration of $150, paid for the same, on condition that 
the property should be used for the erection of a church; 
and here they proceeded to erect the first church edifice. 
This was completed the following year, and consecrated 
July 27, 1807. It would be interesting to know just 
why this church was named St. Michael’s; but of that 
there is no record. Doubtless it represented some 
early associations of some of the founders, but what, 
or of whom, we do not know. 


8 Annals of St. Michael’s 


The first entry in the minute-book of the Vestry con- 
tains the record of the consecration, as follows: 


I Benjamin Moore by divine permission Bishop of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York, do 
hereby declare that the House, by the name of St. Michael’s 
Church, is consecrated to the service of Almighty God, for 
the administration of the Sacraments, and other rites and 
ceremonies, according to the use of the Protestant Episco- 
pal Church in the United States of America. 

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and 
seal this 27th day of July in the year of our Lord one thou- 
sand eight hundred and seven, and in the Sixth year of 
my Consecration. 

BENJAMIN Moore, 
Bishop of the P. E. Church, 
in the State of New York. 


The next entry records the meeting for incorporation 
held August 17, 1807: 


In THE NAME oF Gop, AMEN. We the Subscribers do 
Certify, that a meeting of the male persons of full age, 
in communion with the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
the State of New York, who belong to the Church or 
Cengregation of St. Michael’s 

Which said Church is situate at a place called Blooming- 
dale in the Ninth Ward of the City of New York, in the 
County of New York, for the purpose of Incorporating 
themselves, under the act entitled an Act to provide for 
the Incorporation of religious societies, was holden in the 
said Church on this seventeenth day of August, in the year 
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seven, pur- 
suant to a legal notice for that purpose given. And we 
further certify that at the said meeting Garrit Van Horne 
(there being no Rector) was called to the Chair and pre- 
sided. And thereupon the said meeting did by a majority 
of voices duly elect Robert T. Kemble and William Rodgers 


The Incorporation 9 


to be Church Wardens, and Valentine Nutter, Edward 
Dunscomb, Michael Hogan, William A. Davis, Oliver H. 
Hicks, Jacob Schieffelin, Thomas Cadle and Isaac Jones to 
be Vestrymen of the said Church or Congregation. And 
the said meeting did then and there determine, that on 
Wednesday in Easter week the said offices of Church 
Wardens and Vestrymen shall annually cease, and their 
successors in office be chosen. And we do further certify 
that the said Church or Congregation is to be known in 
law by the name and title of St. Michael's Protestant 
Episcopal Church. 


In Witness WHEREOF we have hereunto affixed our 
hands and seals the day and year first above written. 


Witness 

James P. Van Horne, GarRrit VAN Horne, Chairman. 
Rosert G. L. De Peyster, Davip M. CLarxson, 

Joun C. CLARKSON. FreD® Dr PEYSTER. 


As an incorporation, therefore, the birthday of this 
church was August 17, 1807. The first church was 
consecrated, however, on the 27th of July of that 
year, the corner-stone was laid in 1806, and the incep- 
tion of the undertaking dates from 1805. The Corpora- 
tion of St. Michael’s Church, consisting of the wardens 
and vestrymen, held its first. meeting on the 2oth of 
August, three days after the incorporation, when there 
were present the two wardens, Robert T. Kemble and 
William Rodgers, and six of the vestrymen, Edward 
Dunscomb, Thomas Cadle, Valentine Nutter, Michael 
Hogan, Isaac Jones, and William A. Davis. Robert T. 
Kemble was chosen chairman of the meeting and also 
made first treasurer of the church. William A. Davis 
was the first secretary. The business of the first meet- 
ing was to elect a rector, and the Rev. John Henry 
Hobart, at that time an assistant at Trinity Church, 


IO Annals of St. Michael’s 


later rector of that church and Bishop of New York, 
was appointed rector of St. Michael’s Church. He was 
at that period the coming man, and St. Michael’s was 
one of a number of churches which elected him as its 
rector, only to have the call declined. At the same 
meeting it was resolved to seli the pews “on Thursday 
next, the 27th inst., at four o’clock, for three years, 
subject to an annual rent of $5 per pew, except num- 
bers 1 and 53, which are rated at $10 per annum.” 
This was not a low rental for those days, pews in St. 
Paul’s and elsewhere renting at the same figure. Pews 
1 and 53 seem to have been the two large double pews 
on either side of what served as the chancel. At this 
meeting the trustees of the property, Robert T. Kemble, 
William Rodgers, and William Jauncey were requested to 
convey the property held in trust by them to the cor- 
poration of St. Michael’s Church; the secretary was 
directed to procure an appropriate seal for the use of 
the corporation; and the chairman was authorized to 
call meetings of the wardens and vestrymen “‘ whenever 
in his opinion the occasion shall require.’”’ The sale of 
pews took place as directed on the 27th of August of 
the same year, and the list of the first pewholders, with 
the prices paid by them, is recorded in the minutes.! 
Oliver H. Hicks and John Jackson secured the double 
pews, 1 and 53, at a rental of $10. The other pews, 
instead of renting at $5 each, or $15 for the period of 
three years, as expected, fetched prices varying from 
$8 for three years, paid by Dr. Hammersley for pew 
2, to $25 for the three years paid by Peter Schermer- 
horn for pew 47. All told, the amount realized from 
the sale of pews for three years amounted to $577, or a 
little less than $200 a year. 
1 See Appendix A. 


Hamilton and Schieffelin II 


The first pewholders were summer residents of 
Bloomingdale and adjacent sections, occupying their 
houses from May to November and attending during 
the winter Trinity or one of its chapels. A perusal of 
the list shows that among them were the most promi- 
nent citizens of New York; while some of the names 
on the list remind us that the period of the Revolution 
was not yet remote. Pew 3 was bought by Mrs. 
Hamilton, the widow of the famous statesman. She 
lived at about 142d Street and what is now Convent 
Avenue. All the land thereabout, from above 144th 
Street to and including the Manhattanville valley, and 
from St. Nicholas Avenue westward to the North 
River, originally belonged to Mr. Jacob Schieffelin 
and his brothers-in-law, Lawrence and Buckley. A 
considerable piece of this land Mr. Schieffelin sold 
to his dear friend, Alexander Hamilton, that he might 
have him for a neighbor, and on this land General 
Hamilton built a residence known as Hamilton 
Grange. Mr. Schieffelin’s own country seat stood 
on what was until recently the site of the Colored 
Orphan Asylum, about 144th Street and Broadway, and 
was known as Roccoa Hall. During the Revolution 
Mr. Schieffelin, of German origin but a Philadelphian 
by birth, had been a Royalist, serving on the staff of 
the British General, Henry Hamilton. After the war, 
like so many other Royalists, he emigrated to Canada, 
engaging in business in Montreal. Later, having mar- 
ried a young Quaker lady from New York, he removed 
to this city and in conjunction with his brother-in-law, 
John B. Lawrence, established in 1794 the drug firm 
of Lawrence & Schieffelin, which, after 113 years, still 
continues to exist as W. H. Schieffelin & Co. 

Another Royalist and officer of the English army, 


12 Annals of St. Michael’s 


who appears among the original pewholders of St. 
Michael’s Church, is Frederick DePeyster, fourth in 
descent from Johannes DePeyster, who came to this 
country from Holland about 1650. He was a captain 
in the King’s Third American Regiment. After the 
war he emigrated to New Brunswick, returning to this 
city, in which his family had long played a prominent 
part, some time after 1792. Here he occupied a dis- 
tinguished position both in the civil and religious lite 
of the community. He was a vestryman of Trinity 
Church and the first treasurer of the Society for 
Promoting Religion and Learning. His country home 
was on the present site of St. Luke’s Hospital, on 
the bluffs overlooking Harlem Plain. The house of 
his cousin, Nicholas DePeyster, stood at about 114th 
Street and Bloomingdale Road, and much of the land 
in that vicinity was in the hands of various members 
of the DePeyster family. 

Michael Hogan, who had come over from England 
to this country, built and occupied the present Clare- 
mont at 125th Street on the high bluffs overlooking the 
river and the Manhattanville valley. William Rodgers’s 
home, which later became the Abbey Hotel, burned 
in 1852 or 1853, stood at about 102d Street and the 
river, his property extending southward almost to 
Striker’s Bay. Robert T. Kemble’s property was 
adjacent to this on the north, and the entrance to both 
properties was through Kemble’s afterwards Abbey 
Lane. Garrit Van Horne’s house stood just south of 
94th Street and west of the Bloomingdale Road, on the 
north side of a charming lane running down to the 
river. Later it became part of the Mott property, and 
was for many years the residence of Rev. William 
Richmond. In that house the present rector and 


FIVE ORIGINAL PEWHOLDERS OF ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH 


FREDERICK DEPEYSTER i Upper Left) PETER SCHERMERHORN (Upper Right) 
JACOB SCHIEFFELIN (Center) BARON JOHN CORNELIUS VANDENHEUVEL (Lower Left) 
OLIVER H. HICKS (Lower Right) 


Other Pewholders 13 


the present senior warden of this parish were born. 
William Jauncey’s house, known as Elmwood, which 
will be remembered by many middle-aged residents 
of this region as Elm Park, a picnic resort at which one 
of the Orange and Ribbon riots of the seventies began, 
stood just south of 92d Street between gth and roth 
avenues, on the present site of St. Agnes’s Chapel. Near 
this, at about 90th Street and Broadway, was William 
A. Davis’s place, known as Ravenswood. John Mac- 
Vickar was one of the best known citizens and most 
prominent Churchmen of New York of that day. His 
place stood just south of the Brockholst Livingston 
property, at 89th Street and the North River. Baron 
_ John Cornelius Vandenheuvel, formerly governor of 
Demerara in Guiana, who had married a Miss Apthorpe 
of Bloomingdale, lived in a large brick house which 
he had built at 79th Street and Broadway. This was 
afterwards the Burnham Hotel, and has only re- 
cently been pulled down to make way for apartment 
houses. Valentine Nutter owned a considerable prop- 
erty, bounded by 8th Avenue on the west, running 
from a little above 111th Street to 107th Street, and 
then southeastward far into the present Central Park. 
Nathaniel Prime, the first great banker of New York 
and counted one of the five richest men of America 
in his day, lived at 86th Street and the East River. 
The Rhinelander, Schermerhorn, and Jones properties 
were in the same general region along the East River. 
All of these men were prominent in the life of the city 
in their day, and most of them were prosperous mer- 
chants. Some of the other pewholders and early 
parishioners of St. Michael’s lived on Harlem Plain, 
and the original parish, reckoned according to the 
homes of the pewholders, may be said to have ex- 


14 Annals of St. Michael’s 


tended from 162d Street or thereabouts on the north 
to 72d Street or thereabouts on the south and from 
the North River to the East River. 

At the time St. Michael’s was started the only other 
Episcopal churches in the city were Trinity, with its 
two chapels of St. George and St. Paul, Christ Church, 
founded in 1793 but not admitted to Convention until 
1802, St. Mark’s in the Bowery, admitted to Convention 
in the same year, 1802, the French Church of St. Esprit, 
admitted in 1804, and St. Stephen’s in 1805. Outside 
of the city of New York there were in the diocese 
one church on Staten Island (St. Andrew’s), one in 
Brooklyn (St. Ann’s), four churches in the neighboring 
villages on Long Island, five churches in Westchester 
County, and about six churches in the Hudson River 
towns up to Troy; in all, twenty churches in union 
with Convention, with a few weak mission stations. 
There were about twenty-five clergy in the diocese, 
which comprised theoretically the whole state, and the 
total number of communicants was less than the num- 
ber of communicants in one church like St. George’s, 
New York, at the present day. LEcclesiastically it was 
a day of very small things. 

To turn from the religious to the secular: the total 
population of the city in 1807 was probably not 
more than 75,000. As to area, on the east side the 
city extended up the Bowery as far as Grand Street 
and on the west side as far as Leonard Street, but 
there was much unoccupied space within this area. 
The fashionable part of the city was Broadway below 
Pearl Street, with Wall Street and Pine. Nathaniel 
Prime lived at No. 1 Broadway, Jacob Schieffelin on 
Pearl Street, Oliver H. Hicks on Wall Street, and most 
of the other vestrymen of St. Michael’s in that imme- 


The Embargo 15 


diate neighborhood; and with the exception of St. 
Mark’s in the Bowery all the churches were in that 
vicinity. St. Mark’s was still well out in the country, 
and many of its parishioners were only summer resi- 
dents. So in the Convention Report of 1806 we read: 
“Communicants can not be exactly ascertained; in the 
summer there are usually from 120 to 200, in the winter 
from 60 to 7o persons.”” There were at that time 
nineteen newspapers in New York, of which eight 
were dailies, among them the Evening Post and the 
Commercial Advertiser. 

In the political world 1807 was a period of great 
excitement and disturbance. In that year Napoleon 
‘brought Russia to her knees by the victory of Fried- 
land and reached the very pinnacle of his fame and 
power. Both he and the English Government, in their 
struggle for control of the seas, had so mishandled the 
commerce of the poor and petty United States that at 
last by way of reprisal and self-defence “the Embargo,”’ 
Jefferson’s “peaceful war,’’ was declared at the close 
of that year. No ships were allowed to leave port 
to the great detriment and within the next few years 
almost the ruin of the commerce of New York, and 
not a few of the prominent merchants connected with 
the founding of St. Michael’s Church were seriously 
affected in purse by this act. Internally the country 
was disturbed by the Burr trial, in which also some 
of the members of St. Michael’s had a peculiar and per- 
sonal interest, for Alexander Hamilton’s widow was a 
member of the parish as were also not a few of his dear 
friends and neighbors. 

Thanks to these conditions the year 1807 and the 
next few years following were a period of financial de- 
pression and stagnation. The city almost ceased to 


16 Annals of St. Michael’s 


grow; but there were some men who even then foresaw 
in some degree the future greatness of New York. It 
was in our birth year, 1807, that a committee was 
appointed, consisting of Simeon DeWolf, Gouverneur 
Morris, and John Rutherford to lay out the streets of 
New York, a trust which they finally fulfilled in 1811 
by mapping out our present street system as far north 
as 155th Street. But to the majority of the people of 
that day such a street scheme seemed but an idle dream, 
and when the City Hall was completed in 1812, it was 
finished with marble on the front and cheaper sand- 
stone on the north side toward Chambers Street, 
because our city fathers and with them the majority 
of the people believed that the city was not likely to 
extend beyond those limits, and hence no one would 
see the back of the building. 

In spite of the financial depression and the political 
disturbance, or perhaps because of them, for periods 
of financial depression and serious political upheaval 
are apt to coincide with periods of spiritual and religious 
activities, the year 1807 was peculiarly fruitful indus- 
trially, socially, and religiously in events of importance 
for New York. In August of that year Fulton’s steam- 
boat, the Clermont, named after the Livingston home- 
stead, in recognition of Mr. Livingston’s assistance, 
made its first trip to Albany in thirty-two hours. A 
little later in the same year the Phenix, owned and 
invented by Col. John Stevens of Hoboken, was 
launched, but as Livingston had secured a monopoly 
of steam navigation on the Hudson through the priority 
of Fulton’s invention, the Phenix was transferred to 
Philadelphia. At this day it is interesting to note that 
Fulton made his experiments in Collect Pond, a sheet 
of water some two miles in circumference, and at its 


A Church Revival 17 


deepest portion fifty feet in depth, surrounded by a 
“dense forest,’ occupying the territory where now 
stand the Tombs and the old Five Points, including 
Mulberry Street, and connected with the Hudson 
River by a canal, which is now Canal Street. It was 
a favorite skating ground in winter then and later. In 
1807 also the public school system received its initia- 
tory impulse. Teaching began in old No. 1 on Chat- 
ham Street on April 28th of that year; and in the same 
year both state and city commenced to contribute 
toward the support of education. In the same year 
the College of Physicians and Surgeons was established. 
In 1807 the New York Orphan Asylum Society, with 
Mrs. Alexander Hamilton as its second directress, 
opened its first building, the first orphan asylum of the 
city. In the same year the New York Hospital was 
organized, which was a little later to build one of its 
most important asylums, that for the insane, within 
the bounds of St. Michael’s parish; and a year later the 
American Academy of Fine Arts was founded. 

The year 1807 and the years immediately preceding 
and succeeding witnessed, moreover, the founding of 
a relatively large number of new churches, especially 
of our own communion, suggesting a quickening of 
spiritual life and the beginning of a reaction from the 
long period of unbelief and indifference which marked 
the closing years of the eighteenth century. Out of the 
old French Church of the Refugees was organized in 
1804 the French Church of St. Esprit; St. Stephen’s 
Church was organized and its first building consecrated 
in 1805. In 1807 St. John’s Chapel of Trinity was 
built, the most expensive and finest place of worship 
in the city in those days. In 1808 Grace Church was 
built by Trinity at a cost of $20,000 and endowed 


2 


18 Annals of St. Michael’s 


with twenty-five lots of land. In 1810 St. James’s 
Church was consecrated and in the same year the 
Lutheran congregation of Zion joined the Episcopal 
Church in a body, as the result of a movement begun 
in 1804, was incorporated as a parish, and began to 
build its first church edifice, which was completed and 
consecrated the following year. In 1811 St. George’s 
Church was organized out of St. George’s Chapel. 
Prejudice was still strong, however, against the Epis- 
copal Church, as the church of the Royalists, and the 
adherents of that church were still almost exclusively 
the members of a few old families, chiefly of English 
or Royalist connection, with their dependents. But 
the tide was beginning toturn. French and Lutherans 
were joining the Church, and the list of the first pew- 
holders of St. Michael’s, with its Vandenheuvels, Van 
Hornes, DePeysters, Schermerhorns, and the like, 
shows the drift of the old Dutch families toward the 
Episcopal Church as the church of the aristocracy. 


CHAPTER II 


A Record of the Growth and Development of the Church and 
Neighborhood, with Reference to Happenings Political, 
Economical, and Social, to the Close of Rev. Dr. Jarvis’s 
Rectorship, in 1820. 

HE attempt to secure the Rev. John Henry Hobart 
as first rector of the church failed, and for the first 
year of its existence St. Michael’s Church was 

without a settled minister. Apparently occasional 

services were held, for there is a record in the Vestry 
minutes of a resolution to ring the bell at sunset on 

Saturday when service was to be held on Sunday. 

The amount obtained by the sale of pews for the 
support of the church was found, from the outset, 
to be quite inadequate, and the Vestry resolved to 
take a collection every Sunday morning. The cost 
of the church building is reported as $4959.72, of 
which Trinity Corporation contributed $2000. Evi- 
dently a subscription paper had been passed about to 
raise the remainder, for, after the incorporation of 
the society, the treasurer reports that he is in receipt 
from Frederick DePeyster of the sum of $100, his 
subscription toward erecting the building. No other 
names of subscribers, however, are preserved.! The 


1 The names of a few of the early pewholders of St. Michael’s 
appear on the subscription list for the erection of St. Stephen’s, 
in 1805: Frederick DePeyster, $30, Joshua Jones, $25, William 
Rhinelander, $25 (twice), and Thomas Cadle, $5. 

19 


20 Annals of St. Michael’s 


church itself was a plain frame building, painted white, 
with a small belfry, the common type of church archi- 
tecture at that period. It stood on what is now 
Amsterdam Avenue, and a long path led from the church 
door to the entrance on Bloomingdale Road. Be- 
tween the church and the road stood a couple of weep- 
ing willows, which are said to have been characteristic 
of the scenery of Bloomingdale in those days. At the 
outset there were no blinds to the windows, and among 
the earlier expenses for which provision was made was 
the purchase of blinds. Within the church was 
severely plain, according to the fashion of the time. 
One of those who worshipped there, at a somewhat 
later date, writes that in his recollection the old church 


was furnished with high-backed pews, a lofty reading desk 
on the north side of the chancel, and a still more lofty 
pulpit on the south side. The chancel window was a fine 
piece of stained glass, imported from England, representing 
the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, with the motto: 
“May I not do what I will with mine own?” and was, I 
believe, a gift from some person who took this manner of 
asserting his protest against certain criticisms of his dis- 
position of his property. 

An old guide-book, A Picture of New York, states 
the dimensions of the church to have been 53 ft. by 26 
ft., which seems to be an error. The few who still re- 
member the church say that it was about the size 
of the present St. Mary’s Church, Manhattanville, 
which would correspond better with the number of 
pews contained in the pew rental record. It seated 
about 200 persons. There was no centre aisle, but 
two side aisles. There was no organ and no musical 
instrument of any sort. The responses were read 
by the clerk, who also lifted the hymns. 


THE FIRST CHURCH 


Consecrated July 27, 1807 


The First Minister 21 


Although it had no rector, the church was repre- 
sented in the Convention of 1807 by lay delegates, elected 
at a vestry meeting held on September 28th of that 
year. Early in the following year, before the members 
of the church had moved to their country homes, 
a meeting of the wardens and vestrymen was held at 
the house of Oliver H. Hicks in Wall Street, and Robert 
T. Kemble, Valentine Nutter, and Isaac Jones were 
appointed a committee to find a rector. The number 
of clergy in orders at that time was very small. The 
clergy of the colonial period had been chiefly English- 
men. The Revolution put a stop to this supply, and 
as no schools or colleges had yet been founded by the 
Church in America for the education of its own minis- 
ters a dearth of clergy followed. But the Vestry were 
determined that another summer should not pass 
without some provision being made for services. 

_ They were godly and pious men, quite unwilling either 
to drive down on Sunday to Trinity or one of the 
other churches in the city, or to go without religious 
ministrations. By a canon passed in 1806, “ providing 
for the supply of vacant parishes,” owing to the in- 
creasing demand for the services of the Episcopal 
Church and the scarcity of clergymen, it was ordered 
that all settled rectors were to take duty in outlying 
parishes. Acting under this canon, St. Michael’s 
now turned to its neighboring parish of St. John’s, 
Yonkers, and on April 30, 1808, the Rev. Mr. Cooper 
of that church was appointed minister until November 
1st, at the rate of $300 for that time, and Mr. Jarvis! 

1 No first names are given for either Mr. Cooper or Mr. Jarvis. 
There seems no doubt, however, that the first was the Rev. Elias. 
Cooper of Yonkers. The only other Cooper on the clergy list of 


the diocese was Joab G. Cooper of Hudson. There was a Peter 
Cooper recommended for ordination in 1790. Whether he was 


22 Annals of St. Michael’s 


appointed clerk for the same period, at a salary of 
$100, including expenses of travelling to and from 
Bloomingdale. If and how long Mr. Cooper officiated 
is not clear, for a little over a fortnight later, May 
16, 1808, the Rev. John Vanderbilt Bartow, son of 
Rev. Thomas Bartow of New Rochelle, was called to 
be minister of the church at a salary of $500 a year, 
and it was ordered that the church should open for 
services “by the second Sabbath in June.’’ Evidently 
it was opened at that time, for on Sunday, June 12th, 
Mr. Bartow baptized “Robert Birmingham, a white 
infant, at St. Michael’s Church.’ This is the first 
entry in the parish register, and represents, apparently, 
the date of commencement of regular services. 

Mr. Bartow was at that time in deacon’s orders 
and so continued during his connection with St. 
Michael’s Church. Technically he was never rector 
and he never had a seat in Convention. His duties 
appear to have consisted in holding service once a 
Sunday from April or May until November, and 
officiating occasionally at baptisms, marriages, and 
burials. The great majority of the baptisms, marriages, 
and burials recorded by him on loose sheets of paper, 
and now in the archives of this church, were not per- 
formed at St. Michael’s but at various city churches or 
at private houses without the parish. Evidently but 
a small part of his time was engaged by his duties 
at St. Michael’s. He did not even reside in the parish. 
His study was in Broad Street, and apparently he 
resided either there or with his father in New Rochelle. 


ever ordained or what became of him, I do not know. There was 
a James Jarvis, clerk of St. Mark’s in 1799, but whether he was the 
same Mr. Jarvis who became clerk of St. Michael’s in 1808 I do 
not know. 


/ Memorializing Trinity 23 


It is impossible successfully to conduct any parish 
by distant treatment, and it is not to be wondered at 
that, before the season was out, September 8, 1808, 
it was necessary to appoint a committee to solicit 
subscriptions for “the support of the church and the 
clergyman for the present year.’”’ This was not, ap- 
parently, Mr. Bartow’s fault, but the fault of the whole 
idea and arrangement of the parish, which made it a 
mere “chapel of ease,’’ a place at which a decorous 
and respectable sort of family prayers was to be held 
once a week during the summer, for a little group of 
well-to-do neighbors. 

The financial condition soon became so serious that 
at a Vestry meeting called on Thursday, January 26, 
1809, a committee was appointed to memorialize 
Trinity Church for aid in the establishment of a per- 
manent revenue for the support of St. Michael’s Church. 
This committee, which consisted of Robert T. Kemble, 
Valentine Nutter, Edward Dunscomb, and William 
A. Davis, drew up a memorial which was adopted 
by the vestry at a meeting at the house of Mr. Hicks 
on Friday, February 3, 1809: 

To the Wardens and Vestrymen composing the Corporation 
of Trinity Church in the City of New York. 

The Corporation of St. Michael’s Church in the ninth 
Ward of the said City to your Honorable Body most 
respectfully Represent. 

That notwithstanding the liberal aid they have hereto- 
fore received from the funds of Trinity Church, and the 
very handsome and laudable donations or subscriptions 
of private individuals anxious to establish an Episcopal 
Church in that neighbourhood, a considerable debt incurred 
in the erection and completion of said Church remains yet 
unpaid. 

That they have solicited subscriptions by which they 


24 Annals of St. Michael’s 


have thus far been enabled to meet the incidental and 
necessary expenses, and keep together their Congregation, 
which to many of them, and your memorialists in par- 
ticular, has been a source of satisfaction and happiness, 
inasmuch as some of them have large and growing families, 
whom they are desirous of educating in the doctrines of 
the Church, which it would be very inconvenient if not 
utterly impossible to accomplish, was it not for the present 
establishment. 

And your memorialists are verily of opinion that the 
Church must languish and decline without your fostering 
aid. 

Your memorialists have witnessed on different occasions 
the liberality of the Corporation of Trinity Church, and 
their anxiety to support and conduct to independence the 
infant Church Establishment, they therefore with confi- 
dence appeal to that liberality which characterised your 
respectable Body, trusting that in the exercise of it you 
will experience the pleasing reflection of having nurtured 
and established on a firm basis a house of worship in the 
vicinity of your populous City. 

They therefore most respectfully solicit from the Cor- 
poration of Trinity Church, a fund either in money or 
land, from which a permanent revenue may be derived, 
sufficient to relieve them from their present embarrass- 
ments, and to enable them in future, more effectually to 
support the Clergyman and establishment of St. Michael’s 
Church. 


It is worth noting that at least four members of 
the Trinity Vestry thus memorialized were themselves 
pewholders at St. Michael’s: John McVickar, Freder- 
ick DePeyster, Joshua Jones, and David M. Clarkson. 
There is no record in the minutes of St. Michael’s 
Church of the disposition made of this memorial, but 
from the records of Trinity Church it appears that 
six lots were given to St. Michael’s Church, two each 


The Trinity Charter 25 


in Vesey, Barclay, and Chambers streets, and that in 
addition an annual donation of $500 was granted to 
the churches of St. Michael and St. James com- 
bined. At that date and for a long time thereafter, 
it was the policy of Trinity Church to make such deeds 
of real estate for the purpose of establishing independ- 
ent churches. It had given twenty-eight lots to St. 
Mark’s a few years earlier. The next year, 1808, it 
gave twenty-five lots to Grace Church, besides de- 
fraying the entire cost of a church building. Some- 
what later, when St. George’s ceased to be a chapel 
and became a parish, thirty-three lots were deeded to 
that corporation. Other donations of a similar charac- 
ter were made to all the older churches with one ex- 
ception, namely, Christ Church. Christ Church was a 
split from Trinity and was founded in 1793 against the 
wishes of the latter, from which it drew away a consider- 
able portion of its congregation. On this account 
Christ Church not only received no grant of land, but 
Trinity for nine years prevented its admission to 
Convention, which it was able to do under the terms 
of its own charter and title. 

By its original charter of 1697, Trinity was made the 
“sole and only parish church” in New York City, and 
the famous land grant of Queen Anne was made to 
“The Rector together with all the inhabitants from 
time to time inhabiting and to inhabit the city of 
New York, and in communion with the Protestant 
Church of England.” After the Revolution its cor- 
porate title was changed to read: “The Rector and 
Inhabitants of the City of New York, in Communion 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of 
New York.’”’ Trinity was, therefore, after the Revo- 
lution as before, the Church in New York City. In 


26 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the colonial period, when there had seemed to be need 
of additional church accommodation to provide for the 
increasing population, it had erected chapels of ease, 
St. George’s in Beekman Street, in 1752, and St. 
Paul’s, on Vesey Street and Broadway, in 1766. 
The organization of Christ Church in 1793 was, there- 
fore, naturally regarded as a schism. But gradually, 
as a result, apparently, of this schism, a new conception 
of its legal rights and moral obligations began to de- 
velop in the Trinity Corporation. In 1799, when 
the new St. Mark’s Church was nearing completion, 
it was proposed to make it, instead of a chapel, a 
separate church, provided that were legal, and the 
question of the legality of such action was referred 
to Richard Harison and Alexander Hamilton. They 
reported favorably and St. Mark’s Church was created 
and admitted into union with the Convention in 1802. 
At the same time Trinity withdrew its opposition to the 
admission of Christ Church as a separate parish. From 
that time onward for many years it was the policy 
of the Corporation to foster the growth of separate 
and independent churches. The Corporation appeared 
to regard itself as trustee of the church property, not 
for the one parish of Trinity merely, but for the Church 
as a whole, so that, as of right, when a new church was 
founded, some portion of its endowment was turned 
over to that church as its share of that property. 
The original charter of the church would seem to indicate 
that this was the proper view to take of the relation 
of Trinity Corporation to the Church in New York 
City at large, provided separate parishes were to be 
established in that territory. Trinity did not at that 
time abandon altogether the chapel plan, and indeed 
in 1807 it built the new and costly chapel of St. John; 


Trinity’s Changed Policy 27 


but its general policy was to promote the growth of 
independent churches, and it even furthered the de- 
velopment of its own oldest chapel of St. George’s 
into a separate church in 1811, giving it at the same 
time a very handsome land endowment. 

By this time there were some nine parishes in New 
York, besides Trinity. In 1812 some members of St. 
Stephen’s parish claimed the right to vote at the Trinity 
elections, and were refused. To prevent such claims 
in the future, and to validate its own act in alienating 
property to create separate parishes, Trinity applied 
to the Legislature in 1813 for a change of charter. 
Some of the Churchmen of New York entered a pro- 
test against such a change, but none of the separate 
parishes as such protested, and one, St. Mark’s, for- 
mally endorsed Trinity’s petition. By a tie vote in 
Council, the Chancellor deciding, Trinity’s request 
was granted in 1814, and the corporate title changed 
to “The Rector, Church Wardens and Vestrymen of 
Trinity Church in the City of New York,” the grants 
made to separate parishes and the erection of St. 
George’s into a separate parish validated, and the right 
to vote at Trinity elections confined to members of 
Trinity Church and Chapels. This was understood 
to be merely a matter of protection of property, how- 
ever, and not a provision for an intended change of 
policy, and for many years thereafter Trinity in fact 
continued to foster the growth of independent churches, 
giving to each new church which was organized some 
lots of land or assistance in money or both. Later 
this policy was changed and the present policy adopted, 


which has looked first and foremost to the growth 
of Trinity Parish by the erection of new chapels. This 


change of policy was believed, by many, to be not only 


28 Annals of St. Michael’s 


morally, but also legally, indefensible and in 1846-47, 
and again after the erection of Trinity Chapel, in 1857 
an effort was made by the rectors of the leading city 
churches and some of the broadest and most spiritually 
minded laymen, to have the law of 1814 repealed, 
that the matter of the control of the property and the 
manner of its use might be decided by the courts. 
Trinity was accused by them of abusing a trust in- 
tended for the Church at large, and especially of divert- 
ing the funds which should have been used in support 
of work among the spiritually and financially destitute 
to the erection and maintenance of luxuriously equipped 
chapels for its own wealthy members. As a matter 
of law Trinity won, the Legislature refusing to revoke 
the amendment of 1814, and thus deciding that the 
property belonged to Trinity Corporation as such and 
not to the Church in New York at large. But what- 
ever the legal rights of the case may be, probably 
most thinking Churchmen outside of Trinity Corpora- 
tion believe that the older policy was practically and 
morally correct, the policy which best carried out the 
intention of the original trust, and the policy best 
calculated to promote the interests of religion and of 
the Church in New York. There can be no question 
that much greater efficiency in church development 
and missionary work was obtained by the development 
of separate parishes. The huge accumulation of 
funds in the hands of one corporation has not tended 
to the promotion of aggressive spiritual activities. It is 
not the Trinity Chapels, but St. George’s, Grace, St. Bar- 
tholomew’s, Holy Communion, St. Thomas’s, Calvary, 
and St. Michael’s, to mention only a part, which have 
been the originators and promoters of the great spiri- 
tual, educational, and missionary movements in the 


Organization of St. James 29 


Church and city. Having entered upon a policy 
of self-aggrandizement, it became the policy of Trinity 
to add every few years a new chapel to its list, sometimes 
in the poorer regions where they were needed, but some- 
times in the richest and best churched sections of the 
city, and these latter were made twice as beautiful 
and costly as the former. 

Instead of assisting weak churches, as formerly, 
to stand alone by gifts of land or money, it attached 
them to itself by loans or mortgages; and finally it 
began to annex them as chapels. An irresponsible 
and self-perpetuating corporation with an enormous 
and increasing revenue,! adding not churches to 
the diocese, but chapels to itself, Trinity is creating 
an imperium im imperio, which, ever increasing in 
size, threatens serious danger to the Church. 

It will be observed that in Trinity’s grant to St. 
Michael’s, St. James’s Church is also mentioned. In 
1807 the city decided to improve the Common Lands, 
which included in general the region between 45th 
Street and 85th Street on the east side. In carrying 
out this plan there was laid out on paper a park, 
Hamilton Square, extending from Third Avenue to 
Fifth Avenue and from 66th Street to 69th Street, 
and on this park, on the very crest of York Hill, as 
the hill on the western end of which the old reservoir 
in Central Park now stands was called, at 69th Street 
and Lexington Avenue (Hamilton on the original map), 
they set apart a piece of ground “intended for a church 
or academy,’’ which was to be the centre of a new 
village. Some of the gentlemen who had country seats 
along the East River, finding it difficult to attend 


1 Its income at the present time is estimated to be over $800,- 
ooo a year. 


30 Annals of St. Michael’s 


church at St. Michael’s and inspired by the example | 
of the erection of the church in Bloomingdale, promptly 
organized and offered to take the plot marked in the 
map and buildachurch onit. Their offer was accepted, 
and in 1809 they began to petition Trinity, which gave 
them $3000, and to collect money by subscription 
to erect a church, a plain wooden building with a 
belfry, very much like the old St. Michael’s and 
St. Mary’s. The church was consecrated May 17, 
1810, and incorporated July 16th of the same year. 
The senior warden was Peter Schermerhorn, one of 
the original pewholders of St. Michael’s, and Edward 
Dunscomb, Isaac Jones, and Joshua Jones, vestrymen 
or pewholders of St. Michael’s, were prominent in its 
forwarding. Two days after its incorporation, July 
18, 1810, the vestry of St. James’s Church appointed 
a committee to solicit aid from Trinity, and as a matter 
of course received an endowment of land, consisting 
of four city lots, and a stipend or annuity, which, 
as already stated, for St. Michael’s and St. James’s 
together, amounted to $500. Whether the suggestion 
of a union of the two churches originated with Trinity 
or with the gentlemen composing the vestries of St. 
Michael’s and St. James’s, I do not know, but steps were 
soon taken to unite them in support of one clergyman. 
This union did not actually become effective, however, 
until some time after the resignation of Rev. Mr. Bartow. 

The latter presented his resignation on August 27, 
1810, to take effect on September 12th. He left 
the church in fairly good condition financially, thanks 
to the donation from Trinity. The six lots granted 
to St. Michael’s were by that time so leased as to bring 
in an income of about $700 a year.! The pew rentals 


1 No. 73 Chambers Street was leased in 1810 at $150 for twenty- 


Hagegling over Terms 31 


amounted to almost $200, at least on paper. In 
that year also the Vestry began to utilize the land about 
the church for purposes of burial, but the income from 
this source is scarcely worth considering. Under date 
of September 8, 1809, there is notice in the minutes 
of a resolution to fine absentees from meetings $1.00 
each. Whether this was intended to add to the revenue 
or to ensure greater punctuality of attendance is not 
clear. Numerically the church was feeble, the first 
report to Convention, presented in 1810, showing that 
there were at that time only about fifty communi- 
cants, of whom, as is evident from later records, 
about thirty were summer residents, while the re- 
mainder resided in Bloomingdale all the year round. 
There were reported for the year ten baptisms, five 
marriages, and three funerals. 

The committee appointed to select a new minister 
reported the name of Samuel Farmar Jarvis, and on 
November 17, 1810, he was appointed minister, or 
in the event of his receiving priest’s orders, rector 
of St. Michael’s Church at a salary of $800 a year. 
There was no hurry about his reply, as the church 
would naturally be closed during the winter and his 
work would not commence until the spring. In the 
meantime steps were taken to combine the work of 
St. Michael’s and St. James’s. At a meeting of the 
Vestry of St. James’s Church, January 11, 1811, a 
committee of one was appointed to prepare a letter to 
St. Michael’s proposing a union of the two churches 
in the support of one clergyman. Mr. Jarvis is evi- 
dently informed of this, for in his letter of acceptance 


one years and $250 for the next twenty-one years, following the 
custom of ground leases prevailing for such property at that period, 
and 1o1 Vesey Street for twenty-one years at $150. 


32 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of the call of St. Michael’s Church, March, 22, 1811, 
which makes his acceptance depend upon his ordination 
to the priesthood, he refers to the possibility of an 
arrangement with St. James’s also. Evidently, more- 
over, the salary proposed was not sufficient, for at a 
meeting on March 16, 1811, the Vestry of St. Michael’s 
Church resolved to add to its former offer house rent 
at a rate not to exceed $300. Mr. Jarvis “took 
possession of his cure” in April, having been ordained 
priest on the 5th of that month. In the report in 
the Convention Journal of 1811, he appears as rector 
of both St. Michael’s and St. James’s. In point of fact 
the final arrangement between the two churches 
for a joint rectorship was not consummated until 
1813. There was a long period of haggling about terms. 
Under date of February 26, 1812, it is reported to 
St. James’s vestry that an arrangement has been made 
with St. Michael’s, by which the salary of Mr. Jarvis 
is to be $1000, his allowance for horse hire $100, for 
clerk, who was practically assistant to the rector, in 
keeping records, arranging funerals, and many other 
matters, besides leading the service in the church, 
$100, for Mr. Jarvis’s house rent $300, and for salary 
of sexton $75,1 a total of $1575, which was to be divided 
equally between the churches. But this arrange- 
ment made by its committee was not accepted by 
St. James’s vestry. St. James’s did not feel that it 
could pay more than $600, and it wanted the services 
of the rector only from June 1st to November rst, 
while St. Michael’s wished his services all the year 
round. 

1 The salaries for clerk and sexton, $100 and $75, were the same 


as those paid at St. Mark’s and St. Paul’s, and seem to have been 
the usual salaries for such services at that time. 


Union with St. James 33 


While these negotiations were in progress, St. 
Michael’s Church applied to Trinity for an increased 
annual stipend, and in 1813 Trinity decided to raise the 
amount given to St. Michael’s and St. James’s annually 
from $500 to $700, in case they should continue united. 
On March 25, 1813, St. James’s actually called Mr. 
Jarvis to be rector of that church in conjunction with 
St. Michael’s. Trinity having now guaranteed $700, 
the two churches together would be able, it was sup- 
posed, to give Mr. Jarvisa salary of $1800. But, just 
as everything appeared to be settled, came another 
hitch. In July of that year a committee of St. James’s 
vestry met Mr. Jarvis and offered him, as St. James’s 
part of the salary, “the whole present income of the 
estate of St. James’s Church.” Mr. Jarvis declined 
such a contingent fee, if one may so call it, and re- 
turned the certificate of election. The vestry regretted 
his declination or resignation, but did not see that 
“in justice to the infant church it can offer Mr. Jarvis 
more than the actual revenue at its disposal.” The 
vestry evidently did not propose to take active steps 
to increase the amount of their church’s revenue, nor 
were the wardens and vestrymen willing to assume the 
responsibility of guaranteeing the salary originally 
proposed, which guarantee they might have to make 
good to the extent of $10 or $20 apiece. 

Then ensued further conferences between the 
churches. Finally; on August 2, 1813, it was agreed 
that Mr. Jarvis, the rector of St. Michael’s Church, 
shall be called to be rector of St. James’s also, receiving 
from the same $500 for an equal share of his services, 
and on September 2oth a call was actually given to 
Mr. Jarvis on the above basis. But St. Michael’s was 
unwilling toagreetothis. IfSt. James’s Church wished 


3 


34 Annals of St. Michael’s 


to have an equal share of Mr. Jarvis’s services, it must 
pay an equal part of his salary, namely, $700. Finally, 
in October of that year, 1813, an arrangement was 
reached. Mr. Jarvis is to officiate at’ St. Michael’s 
Church on Sunday mornings throughout the year and 
at St. James’s Church on Sunday afternoons from the 
second Sunday in April to the second Sunday in 
November, and St. James’s is to pay $500 a year. If 
later St. James’s wishes Mr. Jarvis’s services in the 
winter also, then St. James’s is to pay its proportionate 
share of the extra amount now to be paid by St. 
Michael’s. The agreement was finally ratified on October 
18, 1813, and services, which had been intermitted at 
St. James’s, were resumed; but Mr. Jarvis did not 
technically become rector of the latter church until 
1814, when he was formally instituted by the bishop. 
In the same year the two churches agreed to provide 
the salary of a common clerk, and from that date 
until 1842 St. Michael’s and St. James’s remained 
twin churches. 

The first few years of Mr. Jarvis’s rectorship are un- 
eventful in the annals of St. Michael’s. From the 
Vestry records it appears that a sun-dial was ordered 
erected in the churchyard in 1812. It is rather 
interesting to note that in the Convention of that 
same year, St. Michael’s was one of the two churches 
whose laity voted against the resolution to declare 
Bishop Provoost not bishop. It will be remembered 
that after the Revolution Dr. Provoost was chosen 
rector of Trinity Church and first bishop of New 
York, probably largely because of his patriotism, he 
being one of the few clergy of the Church who had 
actively espoused the American cause. He was a 
learned man, a classical scholar, a bibliophile, and 


Eftects of War of 1812 EG 


a botanist, and socially one of the interesting figures 
of his day; but he was neither a strong Churchman 
nor a man of special evangelical zeal. He seems to 
have been content with a routine performance of his 
Episcopal duties and to have had no vision of the 
future of religion and the Church. In fact the out- 
look seemed to him discouraging, if not hopeless. 
With the dying out of the old colonial families he 
believed that the Episcopal Church would die out also. 
After the death of his wife, in 1801, at the compara- 
tively early age of fifty-nine, he resigned his bishopric, 
and withdrew to the more congenial cultivation of 
his Linnean farm in Dutchess County. His resigna- 
tion was not accepted; nevertheless, as he refused 
to perform Episcopal functions, Dr. Benjamin Moore, 
who had already succeeded him as rector of Trinity, 
was elected and consecrated bishop in his stead. 
In 1811 Bishop Moore was smitten with paralysis, 
and Dr. Hobart was chosen coadjutor bishop. At this 
point Bishop Provoost unexpectedly reasserted his 
rights as bishop of the diocese, hence the resolution 
referred to. It should be added that, unless Bishop 
Provoost had joined in laying hands on Dr. Hobart’s 
head, the requisite three bishops for his consecration 
could not have been brought together. The episode is 
worthy of record as illustrative of the condition of the 
Church and its extreme feebleness at that time. 

The effect of the embargo in 1807, and the ensuing 
commercial war which culminated in actual war with 
England in 1812 (the embargoes and commercial war 
did not in fact come to an end until 1815) made itself 
increasingly felt in New York City as the years went: 
on. From 1810 to 1815 the population of the city 
remained almost stationary. After 1811 for eight 


36 Annals of St. Michael’s 


years no Episcopal church was erected in the city. 
There is one curious record of the results of the War 
of 1812 in the records of St. Michael’s Church. In 
1819 the Vestry votes to repay Mr. Frederick DePeyster 
the sum of $700 expended by him for a bell, remitting 
in addition the pew-rents then due by him. It appears 
that he had been authorized to purchase and import 
a bell for the church, that first in use having been 
presumably a cheap affair. The ship conveying the 
bell was captured by an English privateer and carried 
into Nova Scotia. After the war Mr. DePeyster 
bought the bell a second time, which so enhanced 
its original purchase price that in the end it cost the 
church somewhat more than $1.00 a pound. 

Doubtless many members of the church individually 
were effected by the war. From the records of the 
DePeyster family we learn that Mr. DePeyster’s 
eldest son, James Ferguson, later vestryman, warden, 
and treasurer of the church, entered the army, becoming 
a captain in 1814. Another son, Frederick, Jr., later 
vestryman and clerk of the vestry, then a student 
in Columbia, helped erect the breastworks at the head 
of Manhattanville hill to protect Bloomingdale against 
invasion by the British. 

In another direction the results of the war made 
themselves sadly manifest in the affairs of the church. 
The lessee of 73 Chambers Street, as a result apparently 
of the financial embarrassment of the time, defaulted 
on his rent and the property came back to the church; 
to be re-leased later for forty-two years at $175 a 
year. Some of the pewholders defaulted on their 
pew-rents and in general there seems to have been a 
carelessness about their payments, so that finally, 
on May 3, 1815, it was voted to appoint a collector 


An Annual Deficit 37 


to collect the pew-rents at $30 a year or about twenty 
per cent. of their actual value. In 1816 it appears 
from the vestry minutes that the church is not meeting 
its obligations. There is a deficit of $155.50. Accord- 
ingly it was voted to send a letter to the pewholders 
setting forth the financial conditions of the church: 


Receipts: Ground rents of lots belonging to the church, 
$727.50; amount of pew-rents the last year at $5 each, 
$150; collections, not exceeding $50; total, $927.50. Ex- 
penditures: Permanent expenses, including salary as well as 
rent, clerk and sexton’s fees, $1050; interest per year on 
loan from Bank of New York, $33; total, independent of 
repairs and incidental expenses, $1083, leaving an annual 
deficit of $155.50, independent of repairs, fuel in the winter, 
and incidental claims. 


In consequence of this statement it was voted that 
“the pew-rents should be doubled, a measure which 
will assist in removing the present embarrassment, and 
this information is given you in full persuasion that no 
objection can be made to a measure so absolutely 
necessary.” 

Mr. Jarvis’s reports to Convention show that St. 
Michael’s was in fact a feeble church. In 1811 he 
reported twenty communicants, who “reside out of 
town the whole year and therefore belong exclusively 
to that parish.” In 1812 he reported thirty communi- 
cants in winter and fifty-four in summer and in the 
following year thirty-six in winter and fifty-seven in 
summer. But although few in number, many of the 
parishioners were wealthy. To be sure they counted 
their first obligation to their city churches, but even 
at that one is amazed at the small amount which they 
contributed, both for the church and for charitable 
purposes. So in 1816 the collection for the mission 


38 Annals of St. Michael’s 


fund in St. Michael’s Church is reported as only 
$12.50 and for the Episcopal Fund $17.124. 

The financial embarrassment was not in fact wholly 
or perhaps primarily due to the war and the subse- 
quent poverty and distress resulting therefrom. The 
Episcopalians of New York had learned to depend 
upon an establishment, and many years were to pass 
before they were trained to give out of their own 
pockets for the support of their churches and church 
work. Queen Anne’s donation to Trinity Church, 
valuable as it was in securing a permanent endowment 
for many of the existing parishes of the city, exerted, 
on the other hand, a deadening influence on the pocket 
nerves of Churchmen where contributions for religious 
work were concerned. That they were not illiberal 
is proved from the fact that many of them were con- 
cerned in the establishment of orphan asylums, hospi- 
tals, and the like; but when it came to church work, 
they appeared to expect that to be provided for out 
of the endowment, and to feel no obligation to con- 
tribute liberally of their own means. Characteristic of 
this attitude is a resolution adopted at a vestry meeting 
held August 23, 1827, by which morning and evening 
collections were ordered to be discontinued, “as inter- 
rupting the solemnity of divine worship and generally 
unpleasant to the congregation.” 

Reference has been made to the small number of 


communicants in the church. In the early reports 
to the Convention there is no mention of persons con- 


firmed in St. Michael’s Church until 1835. In point of 
fact a relatively small number of the adult communi- 
cants of the church were confirmed in the earlier 
years of the century. Confirmation had been a prac- 
tical impossibility during the colonial period, and 


Episcopal Visitations 39 


after the creation of the American Church, with its 
own bishops, it was a long time before people could 
be made to appreciate the need and obligation of that 
rite. During these years also Episcopal visitations 
were of necessity infrequent. The early bishops were 
rectors of parish churches, depending for their support 
principally upon their salaries as rectors and compelled 
to give the greater part of their time to parochial 
preaching and ministrations. Moreover, the dioceses 
were large in extent and the means of conveyance 
slow, inadequate, and expensive. In addition to New 
York Bishop Hobart had under his jurisdiction for 
some years New Jersey and Connecticut, and his 
Episcopal journeys even extended westward to Michi- 
gan. Under such conditions an Episcopal visitation 
could be expected by the smaller and more remote 
parishes only at rare intervals. Bishop Moore visited 
St. Michael’s in 1809 and administered confirmation 
in that church. Five years later, in 1814, Bishop 
Hobart visited both St. Michael’s and St. James’s, insti- 
tuting Mr. Jarvis as rector of the latter and confirming 
in both places. Many long years were to pass before it 
should become a practice annually to prepare candi- 
dates for confirmation and confirmation itself should 
assume its present important place in the eyes of the 
Church. 

During the first years of his ministry Mr. Jarvis 
resided not in Bloomingdale, but in the city, at 490 
Broadway. On September 26, 1815, an important 
move for the development of the parish was made, 
by the provision of a house for the rector in Blooming- 
dale. The Striker house, then occupied by Mrs. 
Marshall, was rented for two and a half years as a 
rectory, and the rent allowance paid the rector was 


40 Annals of St. Michael’s 


increased by $50 to enable him to occupy that 
mansion. 

Another important step in the development of the 
parish was the foundation of St. Michael’s Charity 
School. It was at that time the custom for the 
churches of all denominations to conduct charity 
schools for the education of the poorer children in the 
rudiments of knowledge and religion. The first men- 
tion of such a school in connection with St. Michael’s 
appears in Mr. Jarvis’s report to the Diocesan Conven- 
tion of 1815, that “a school has been established in 
which several poor children are educated at the expense 
of the parish.’”” No mention of this school appears 
in the vestry records, however, until November 27, 
1816, when it is resolved “to establish a Charity School 
and to solicit subscriptions for the same.”’ The history 
of this school is narrated in the next chapter. 

In his diocesan report of 1815 Mr. Jarvis states also 
that a school has been started near St. James’s Church 
for blacks, in which there are upwards of thirty children. 
The colored population of New York at that time was 
relatively quite large. By an act passed in 1758 the 
children of slaves were made free, but slavery itself 
was not abolished until 1827, those who were minors 
at that time continuing slaves, however, until 1830. 
In the early part of the century domestic servants 
were exclusively, or almost exclusively, black slaves. 
Some of the entries in St. Michael’s records are interest- 
ing, as showing the conditions then prevailing: 

“Anthony, son of Catharine, a black woman, servant 
of Mr. McVickar, baptized by the Rev. Dr. Beach,' 
at Bloomingdale, August 6, 1809, Mrs. McVickar, 
sponsor.”’ 


1 Assistant Minister of Trinity Church. 


The Colored People 41 


And among the entries of Mr. Jarvis’s rectorship: 

“John and Jane, both slaves of William A. Davis, 
married on Sunday evening, July 14, 1816, with the 
consent of their master and at the request of their 
mistress.”’ 

Besides these domestic slaves, there were also in 
parts of the city considerable colonies of free blacks. 
Some of these were very poor, existing on the border 
of vagrancy and crime. There was a settlement of 
these poor blacks at Yorkville, as the village which 
sprang up below Hamilton Square was called. Later we 
find a considerable number of colored people mingled 
with the poorer class of whites, living in the waste 
lands of what is now Central Park. To these from the 
outset it became the duty of the twin churches of St. 
Michael and St. James to minister. 

It should perhaps be added that there was also a 
considerable number of highly self-respecting colored 
people in the city at that time, all or most of whom 
were by tradition Churchmen. So, in 1809, we find 
from the Convention Journal that “the Africans 
petitioned for the ordination of a person of color to 
take charge of a congregation of colored people.” 
This was refused, but in 1810 a colored lay reader 
was provided. In 1819 this congregation had grown 
so important that St. Philip’s Church for colored 
people was consecrated in Collect Street, the building 
having been erected principally by their own mechan- 
ics; and in 1821 Peter Williams, colored, was ordained 
deacon of that church. 

With the election of Dr. Hobart as bishop,! the 


1 He was consecrated bishop-coadjutor May 29, 1811, and be- 
came the bishop of the diocese February 27, 1816, on the death 
of Bishop Moore. 


42 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Church in New York found a real leader and soon there- 
after began to assume a more aggressive and a more 
missionary attitude. Before his ordination, while 
still assistant minister at Trinity, Dr. Hobart had 
begun to issue didactic treatises for the education of 
Churchmen, and had founded a periodical entitled 
The Churchman’s Magazine for the same purpose. 
He was also one of the founders of the Bible and 
Common Prayer Book Society, and an active agent in 
the organization of the Protestant Episcopal Theologi- 
cal Society, the intention of which was to spread 
Church principles and help to prepare ministers for 
the Church. He was a keen controversialist and 
engaged in numerous controversies, the most famous 
of which was with Dr. Mason, the Presbyterian presi- 
dent of Columbia College. 

As bishop his forceful character and aggressive 
churchmanship soon made a marked impression on 
the Church and the community. It must be frankly 
confessed that in some points his churchmanship was 
distinctly narrow: so, in his Convention address of 
1822, he opposes Bible societies not under the control 
of the Church, and urges Churchmen not to unite 
in the study or the circulation of the Bible with heretics. 
On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the 
particular method which he pursued tended to the 
immediate increase of the Church, and even the ex- 
clusiveness which he displayed in urging her claims made 
a strong impression on men’s minds. In 1816 William 
Richmond, then a law student at Schenectady, was 
brought into the Church by precisely this presentation 
of her claims and became a student of theology under 
Bishop Hobart’s direction, with the English Fathers 
as his text-books; and this was only one case out of a 


A Theological Seminary 43 


number. It should be added that Bishop Hobart was 
a man of intense missionary zeal and that his patriot- 
ism was as fervid as his churchmanship. Both of 
these things appealed strongly to the community and 
helped greatly in securing a favorable hearing for 
his views on ecclesiastical subjects. All in all he was 
admirably fitted to present the Church to the men of 
his day. 

Bishop Hobart was early impressed with the need of 
establishing Church colleges and especially a theological 
school for the purpose of training young men for the 
ministry. He undertook to establish such a school 
in New York, and in this undertaking he found an 
active supporter in the rector of St. Michael’s and 
St. James’s, and a willing co-operation on the part of 
the vestries of those churches, who granted Mr. Jarvis 
a leave of absence in 1817 to collect funds for the pro- 
posed Theological Seminary. Mr. Jarvis was rapidly 
becoming a man of prominence in the Church, and 
when, in the autumn of the same year, Dr. Berrian, 
rector of Trinity Church, was granted a leave of 
absence, he and Mr. Johnston of Newtown were engaged 
to officiate in that parish on Sunday afternoons for 
six months during his absence. In the following year 
he was elected a member of the Standing Committee 
of the Diocese, and in 1819 he was appointed professor 
of biblical learning in the new General Theological 
Seminary in New York, for which he had helped to 
collect the funds. On May 2ed, of that year he re- 
signed his rectorship of St. Michael’s and St. James’s, 
to take effect, as far as salary was concerned, on the 
first day of April preceding. He continued, however, 
to serve both churches, pending the appointment of 
a successor, until June 1820, in connection, apparently, 


44 Annals of St. Michael’s 


with his professorial duties at the General Seminary, 
and his salary as rector was in fact continued until 
that date. His additional duties do not seem to 
have resulted in a diminution of his parochial labors. 
In 1817 he appears to have commenced evening ser- 
vices in St. Michael’s, which, with the afternoon ser- 
vice at St. James’s, made three services a Sunday. 
In 1819 he began a work of church extension, holding 
occasional services and administering on one occasion 
the sacrament of baptism at the schoolhouse in Fort 
Washington, and holding services at the house of 
Mrs. Finlay in Manhattanville, both settlements of 
poor people. It is worth noting that this commence- 
ment of missionary activities by the rector of St. 
Michael’s parish immediately followed the establish- 
ment in the diocese at large of the Protestant Episcopal 
Missionary Society, founded to support Bishop Hobart’s 
efforts to plant the Church in the newly settled western 
portion of the State. Parish and diocese were both 
beginning to awake to their opportunity and their 
obligation. 

Dr. Jarvis was a devoted and extremely conscientious 
parish priest. He tried to fulfil precisely the duties 
which canons and rubrics prescribed. He was evidently 
held in high affection and esteem by his parishioners, 
and on March 25, 1820, the Vestry of St. Michael’s 
voted the sum of $250 to be invested in a service of 
plate, to be given to him, as a token of gratitude for 
his services and of regard for his character. That 
their sentiments were genuine and lasting is shown 
by the way in which many years afterwards, when 
the news of the death of their former rector reached the 
parish, a special meeting of the vestry was convened 
to pass appropriate resolutions of sympathy and regret. 


CHAPTER III 


Covers the First Rectorship of the Rev. William Richmond and 
the Rectorship of the Rev. James Cook Richmond, 1820-1842, 
Including also the History of St. Michael’s Charity School. 


HANKS to the willingness of Dr. Jarvis to con- 
tinue his services at St. Michael’s and St. James’s, 
after his formal resignation and his appointment 

to a professorship in the Theological Seminary, there 
was no vacancy between his departure and the acces- 
sion of his successor. A committee of the two churches, 
appointed to select a joint rector, extended an invita- 
tion, May 24, 1820, to the Rev. William Richmond, 
then of Philadelphia, to become their minister, and, in 
the event of his receiving priest’s orders, their rector, 
at a salary of $1500, including the grant of $700 from 
Trinity Church, each of the two churches undertaking 
to pay an equal share of the remainder. Mr. Rich- 
mond’s acceptance is dated June 3, 1820, and he 
actually assumed charge at the close of the same 
month, Dr. Jarvis’s last service dating June arst. 
At the time of Mr. Richmond’s accession New York 
had ceased to feel the evil results of the War of 1812, 
and a new period of industrial and commercial pros- 
perity had set in. In 1816 the first line of packets 
was started, establishing a regular connection between 
New York and the old world. In1817 the Erie Canal 
was begun, which, completed in 1825, by establishing 
45 


46 Annals of St. Michael’s 


water communication with the Great Lakes and the 
West, gave New York that commercial supremacy 
which she has ever since maintained and increased. 
The city had begun to spread northward, and in 1823 
it was necessary to remove the Potter’s Field from 
Washington Square, where it was estimated that, up 
to that time, 125,000 strangers had been interred, to 
Bryant Square. It had also begun to accumulate 
wealth, and to make itself more comfortable in its 
municipal and domestic arrangements. Even Bloom- 
ingdale began to feel the effects of the new era of 
progress. In 1819 a stage line was established, con- 
necting it with the city, the stages starting from Tryon 
Row, by Chambers Street, every forty minutes and 
ending their journey at Manhattanville, where Mr. 
Schieffelin, with his brothers-in-law, Lawrence and 
Buckley, had laid out a village and commenced to 
sell lots for houses. Bloomingdale had also been 
selected by the New York Hospital Society as the 
location for the great new asylum for the insane, which 
was completed in 1821, occupying the present site of 
Columbia University. The church records show, also, 
the advent of new families who had built or acquired 
country seats in Bloomingdale; but of this hereafter. 

As already pointed out, the effects of the aggressive 
leadership of Bishop Hobart were beginning to be felt 
in the Diocese of New York, and especially in the 
Church in New York City. Between 1811 and 1820 
no new churches had been organized or built in that 
city. In the latter year St. Luke’s parish was organ- 
ized and in the following year a church built on Hudson 
Street. In 1822 a new building was erected for Christ 
Church. In 1823 St. Thomas’s Church was organized; 
and from that time on almost every year witnessed the 


Bishop Hobart’s Leadership 47 


organization of a new parish or the erection of a new 
church. In 1819 Sunday-schools are first mentioned 
in the Convention Journal. By 1822 it appears, from 
the same source, that Sunday-schools are in operation 
in a number of the New York parishes; and by 1827 
a general Episcopal Sunday-school Union has been 
formed, with plans of instruction and text-books in 
preparation. This, like Bishop Hobart’s work in 
general, was regarded with suspicion by the Low 
Churchmen of the dioceses farther southward. Bishop 
Hobart, on his part, regarded their churchmanship with 
equal apprehension, and in his Convention address of 
1827 he took occasion to condemn the extreme Low- 
Church movement then in progress in Philadelphia. 
It was the day of party strife within and without the 
Church. 

There had been a controversy between Bishop 
Hobart and the General Convention with regard to 
the establishment of a theological seminary. Bishop 
Hobart desired to have the seminary in New York, 
and to establish it on churchly lines. Unless he could 
establish it on such lines he preferred to maintain his 
own school; and he did, in fact, at the outset, establish 
his own theological seminary in New York City, with 
a branch at Geneva, where he also founded an academy, 
and then, in 1822, a college (now Hobart College). As 
the Church could not support a general seminary 
without New York, so it was obliged finally to accept 


The Sunday School was yet upon trial, and was on the whole 
more secular than religious. The New York Sunday School 
Society was founded through Bishop Hobart in 1817 for the pur- 
pose of introducing Church doctrine in the place of ‘‘ non-sectarian’”’ 
instruction. Later the Sunday School came into great favor with 
the Evangelicals; and in 1853 Bishop Doane of New Jersey 
attacks it as destructive of home training of children.—McCon- 
NELL, History of the American Church. 


48 Annals of St. Michael’s 


his terms, and his theological school in New York 
became in fact the General Theological Seminary. 
Under Bishop Hobart’s lead, the Church in New York 
was advancing by leaps and bounds, while elsewhere 
it was almost stationary. 

Attention has already been called to Bishop Ho- 
bart’s missionary work and the organization of the New 
York Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society. The 
latter played an important part in arousing and or- 
ganizing the missionary spirit among the various 
parishes of the diocese. Branches were organized in 
several of the city churches—Grace, Zion, Christ, 
St. John’s and St. Paul’s Chapels,—and the sum of 
$1000 annually, which was considerable for the Church 
of that day (a missionary’s salary was only $150), 
was thus contributed to provide missionaries for the 
outlying parts of the State. The Church at large also 
was beginning to awake to its missionary responsibilities, 
and at the General Convention of 1822 the Domestic 
and Foreign Missionary Scciety was organized. 

It was at the middle of Bishop Hobart’s episcopate, 
when he was just beginning to reap the results of his 
toil, that his former pupil, Mr. Richmond, entered 
upon his duties at St. Michael’s. Like his teacher he, 
too, was full of the missionary spirit, but unlike him, 
he never showed any interest in theological contro- 
versy and took no part in partisan strife. He had been 
for eighteen months a missionary in Pennsylvania; 
and, from the outset, he regarded his work at St. 
Michael’s from the missionary rather than the paro- 
chial view-point. The field to which he was called to 
minister was, in his understanding, not merely the small 
congregations of St. Michael’s and St. James’s, but the 
whole territory from 14th Street on the south to St. 


Organizing New Churches 49 


Peter’s, Westchester, and St. John’s, Yonkers, on the 
north. 


There was no case of distress or sickness occurring in the 
tegion which extended as far up as the Harlem River and 
in the lower part of what was then Westchester County, 
which failed to meet a personal response from Mr. Rich- 
mond. He was sometimes profuse, but never lacking 
in his supply of the wants of the destitute, and many a 
humble home was blest by his frequent ministrations at 
the time of illness and death. . . . It was his usage 
to hold services here and there in private houses, where he 
could thus reach those who gave distance from church as 
an excuse for their non-attendance, or who were too care- 
fess and unconcerned to present themselves at stated 
worship. 


Wherever there was a settlement within this region, 
he proceeded as soon as practicable to organize a new 
church. There was at Manhattanville a hamlet of 
about fifteen houses, the centre of a somewhat larger 
population, chiefly of poor people. Here, as already 
stated, Dr. Jarvis had held an occasional service. Mr. 
Richmond carried on his work, first by holding more 
frequent services, and, finally, by organizing a parish, 
which was incorporated in 1824. Mr. Jacob Schieffelin, 
one of the original pewholders and vestrymen of St. 
Michael’s having given the land for the erection of a 
church building, St. Mary’s Church, Manhattanville, 
was built and consecrated in 1826. 

There was another hamlet of poor people farther north 
at Fort Washington. Here, also, Dr. Jarvis had held 
occasional services. Mr. Richmond began a regular 
mission in the Fort Washington school-house, after- 


1 From a note to a sermon of Rev. C. B. Smith, D.D., preached 
on the seventieth anniversary of the founding of St. James’s. 


50 Annals of St. Michael’s 


wards destroyed by fire, finally organizing St. Ann’s 
Church, which was incorporated in 1827. In both 
these enterprises he had the support and active co- 
operation of St. Michael’s parish, the wardens and 
vestrymen of the latter serving as officers of the new 
churches and otherwise assisting Mr. Richmond in his 
work. It must be added, however, that there were 
some members of the congregation to whom this broad 
policy of church extension appeared objectionable. 
They were afraid that, by the erection of new churches, 
the strength of the original parish would be diminished, 
since those residing in the neighborhood of the new 
church would naturally attend and support that. Mr. 
Richmond’s answer always was: “For every one 
leaving my church there will be eight or ten in the 
new church, and thus the Church at large is strength- 
ened rather than made weak; and besides, every congre- 
gation becomes at once a centre of charity and good 
works, and therefore the poor are benefited.’’! 

On the east side of Mr. Richmond’s parish two more 
considerable settlements existed, the one, Harlem, 
very old, the latter, Yorkville, of recent creation. A 
missionary school work had been commenced among 
the colored people in Yorkville during the rectorship 
of Mr. Jarvis. As the place increased in size, there 
came to be a considerable population of white people 
at this point. These were of a different class from the 
attendants at St. James’s Church, and partly for that 
reason and partly because of the distance they were 
unwilling to attend the services in the parish church. 
Apparently it was with a view to providing for these 
villages that, in 1826, Mr. Richmond proposed to the 
vestry of St. James’s to open that church twice on Sun- 

1 Northender, 1867. 


Purchase of School Site 51 


day instead of once, as heretofore. The next year, the 
winter of 1827-28, the church was open through the 
winter for the first time. To enable him to do this 
additional work the vestries of the two churches 
voted to authorize him to engage an assistant, St. 
Michael’s providing that Mr. Richmond should him- 
self find said assistant’s salary, and St. James’s, as 
more immediately concerned, voting him $100 to be 
used for that purpose. Mr. Richmond engaged as his 
assistant Rev. E. D. Griffin, in 1827, and as, in spite 
of all his efforts, the people of Yorkville would not 
come to St. James’s, he went to them, first holding 
mission services in such rooms as he could secure, 
and finally, in 1828, organizing a church in that village. 
In the following year with the Rev. Mr. Hinton, 
whom he had engaged as an assistant for this purpose, 
he organized St. Andrew’s Church, Harlem. This 
church became at once self-supporting, maintaining 
its own rector; the others remained dependencies of St. 
Michael’s during Mr. Richmond’s first rectorship. A 
further history of the organization of all these churches 
and some account of their later development will be 
found in another chapter. 

While Mr. Richmond was thus engaged in extending 
the work of the Church over a larger area and estab- 
lishing new parishes to cover the upper part of the 
city, St. Michael’s Church was showing signs of internal 
progress. In 1820 a school site, consisting of a little 
over an acre of land with a small house, situated at 
103d and t1o4th Streets near Amsterdam Avenue, 
on what was then Clendening Lane, was leased, and 
finally, in 1825, purchased for $237; but of the history 
and maintenance of this school hereafter. In 1823 
the church increased the salary of the rector by $150, 


52 Annals of St. Michael’s 


on the occasion of his marriage, and in addition paid 
$50 to Rev. Manton Eastburn, later Bishop of Massa- 
chusetts, for assistance rendered to Mr. Richmond, 
apparently in connection with the same event. About 
this time St. Mark’s and others of the city churches were 
introducing organs, and in 1823 St. Michael’s Vestry 
voted to do the same. The organ and a gallery at the 
west end of the church to contain the same were finally 
completed in 1825, the gallery at an expense of $219.50 
and the organ at a cost of $325, the mason work, etc., 
amounting to $32.38 extra. The introduction of an 
organ meant a radical change and a vast improvement 
in the method of conducting the service. Clerks still 
continued to be appointed until 1833, to lead the re- 
sponses, but the musical part of the services was placed 
in the hands of a choirmaster and organist, at first 
volunteers, and then salaried employees of the Church.! 

In spite of the extra expense of building the organ 
and gallery, which was met in part by a subscription, the 
treasurer’s report in that year shows a balance on the 
credit side of $81.43, the receipts amounting to $1886 
and the expenditures to $1804.82. This report was 
presented at the annual meeting, April 8, 1825. 
A little more than two months later, July 16th, 1825, 
a special meeting of the Vestry was called at the office 
of the secretary, Mr. Frederick DePeyster, Jr., 24 


1 The first organist at St. Michael’s appears to have been Miss 
Emeline Davis, daughter of William A. Davis, one of the wardens 
of the church. Her services were voluntary, and ceased, ap- 
parently, in 1831, some time after her marriage to Dr. A. V. 
Williams, then a vestryman. On the 24th of June of that year the 
Vestry voted a testimonial, not to exceed $100, to Mrs. A. V. 
Williams, for ‘“‘superintending the choir for several years.” The 
first mention of a salary for an organist occurs in 1839, when 
$102 is appropriated for that purpose. 


Trinity Withdraws Aid 53 


Broad Street, to consider the following resolutions 
passed by the vestry of Trinity Church: 


Resolved: That the annual allowance to St. Michael’s 
Church be hereafter restricted to the difference between 
the sum of Seventeen Hundred dollars, and the aggregate 
amount of the Rents which are now payable, or which 
hereafter on any renewal of the Leases may become pay- 
able, on the six lots of land heretofore granted to that 
Church, and on the four lots of land heretofore granted to 
St. James’ Church, and when and as soon as the said Rents 
shall aggregately amount to Seventeen Hundred dollars, 
that the said Annual allowance to St. Michael’s Church be 
wholly discontinued. 


This would have meant an immediate reduction 
of the grant to St. James’s and St. Michael’s from $700 
to $350 or $300, and as the receipts and expenditures 
in both churches very nearly balanced, there would 
have been a deficit of some $300 to make good for the 
current year. A committee of three was appointed 
to confer with a similar committee to be appointed by 
St. James’s Church, and the following memorial, which is 
worthy of printing in full, because of its reference to 
the history of the Church and its general exposition 
of the conditions of the parish as then existing, was 
adopted by that committee and presented to the corpora- 
tion of Trinity Church on the 12th of December fol- 
lowing: 

MEMORIAL 


To the Right Rev. the Rector, Church Wardens, & Vestrymen- 


of Trinity Church. 
GENTLEMEN: 
We the undersigned appointed by the respective Vestries 


54 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of St. Michael’s Church Bloomingdale, and St. James’s 
Hamilton Square to address your respectable body, on 
the subject of your Resolution relative to the present 
curtailment, and eventual recall of the Donation, made 
by Trinity Corporation to the said Churches, and to pray 
for a reconsideration of the same. 


Respectfully Represent 

That the first intimation of the said Resolution as 
entered on the minutes of your meeting of the 13th June 
last, was on the quarterly application of the Treasurer of 
the former Church to the Comptroller of your Board, some- 
time subsequent to its adoption: and that in consequence 
of the lateness of the then unofficial communication of a 
matter so materially affecting the existing engagements 
of the said Churches with their Rector; their present in- 
tegrity; and future prospects; the opportunity was lost of 
urging their claims to a continuance of your patronage, 
and of explaining their actual situation, previous to any 
definite decision by your Vestry in their case. 

It is therefore to both of these points of view, the under- 
signed beg leave earnestly to solicit your serious attention; 
and in submitting the following statement in reference 
thereto, we confidently trust that the appeal predicated 
thereof, and which is now made to the Justice and Maternal 
piety of Trinity Church, will upon a review of the whole 
subject, lead to the rescinding of a Resolution fraught with 
such evil consequences to the Churches we represent; to 
the very cause, she herself, as the head and life of this 
diocese, has in hand; and in opposition to the sacred bene- 
fits of which fortune has made her the guardian, as well as 
the dispenser. 

It is deemed unnecessary to detail here the nature and 
extent of the relief granted prior to the 1st of February 
1813. It is sufficient for us to acknowledge its liberality 
and important consequences. 

By a resolution of that date, exclusive of donatiors of 


Need of Annual Grant 55 


$700 towards the payment of the debts of St. Michael’s 
Church, and of $800 to St. James’ Church, to “satisfy its 
necessities;’’ an additional donation was granted to the 
former, for the specific purpose of supporting the Minister; 
on the condition however that the Churches should remain 
united. And from your minutes of 12th February 1816, 
it appears that the allowances granted to the different 
Clergy and Congregations on this Island, not belonging to 
Trinity Church Corporation, were continued until the 
further order of your Vestry. 

On the faith of this grant the 2 Churches entered into 
engagements with the present Rector; Whatever is there- 
fore deducted from the donation is subtracting from his 
Salary; since their incidental expenses, and the requisite 
repairs of the buildings, with allowance of the Clerk & 
Sextons, will for a length of time amount to if not exceed, 
any surplus funds in their respective treasuries, and put 
it out of their power to make good the deficiency. As it is 
we are informed, that the Rector’s Salary is barely suffi- 
cient for his support, and is altogether disproportioned to 
that given to the majority of the Clergy of this City; besides 
the withholding of this aid took place during the existence 
of the annual donation, and is likely therefore to put the 
Rector to great inconveniences, resulting from engage- 
ments predicated of its continuance for the year at least: 
and of the present deduction from which he was not ad- 
vised, and which he could not anticipate. 

Doubts are said to exist in the minds of some of your 
Vestry, and are openly avowed, we greatly regret to learn, 
as to the practical benefits consequential upon the con- 
tinuance of St. Michael’s and St. James’ Congregations, 
as such. 

We are the more surprised at these suggestions, as we 
feel fully persuaded that the advantages resulting from 
these Establishments, are progressively increasing, and 
that their existence is loudly demanded by the growing 


56 Annals of St. Michael’s 


population, and unparalleled extension of the City. We 
cherish with grateful pleasure the recollection of the pious 
concern that originally dictated the erection of these 
Churches; where the fugitives from the pestilence, which 
then closed the Sanctuaries of Episcopal Worship; the 
neighbouring poor; and the piously inclined: could worship 
the God of their Fathers after their own peculiar Com- 
munion; and we admire the foresight of the original pro- 
jectors of a plan, matured by your predecessors in office, 
supported by the late and present head of the Diocese 
themselves, and hitherto fostered by the spontaneous 
generosity of Trinity Corporation. 

These ‘infant Establishments we are confident will be 
the means of more widely disseminating the doctrines of 
the Church, and of laying the corner stone for other and 
similar erections on this part of the Island; and we are 
therefore the more desirous that the foundations already 
laid, may be strengthened to enable them to maintain 
their present “‘ Vantage ground,” and to conduct to maturity 
under your favouring auspices, an experiment so happily 
tested, and of such essential results to their respective 
congregations, and to the community at large, for at present 
about fifty families attend the services of these Churches; 
most of whom would if they were closed altogether neglect 
Divine Worship or stray into other places not Episcopal, 
besides the inconvenience, if not impracticability which 
would be generally felt (should such an event through the 
want of your pecuniary assistance happen) of educating 
in the doctrines of the Church the junior Members, who 
now attend upon its Services. 

The Congregation of St. Michael’s Church has for some 
years past supported a Charity School principally by 
Subscription; in which about 40 poor Children of parents 
not generally in communion with our Church have been 
instructed in its doctrines and discipline, as well as in 
other branches of Education. And it is greatly to be 


Claims of Trinity’s Lawful Children 57 


feared that the effect of the Resolution referred to (if acted 
upon) will be to discontinue this School. This Congrega- 
tion has also lately purchased an Organ with the aid of 
voluntary Subscriptions; which has been found a bene- 
ficial supplement to the divine services of the Church, in 
fixing the attention and animating the devotion of the 
Congregation. 

Probably half of the Freeholders of St. Michael’s and all 
but one of St. James’; also hold pews in Churches in the 
lower parts of the City, and contribute there their full 
proportion towards the same, and the many charitable 
objects and Institutions supported by the friends of Epis- 
copacy generally. But independently of the considerations 
above presented, if a deduction is to be carried into effect, 
we firmly hope and intreat that the Churches we represent 
may not be made the Sufferers for the advantage of others, 
or to add to their resources by the contraction of that 
munificence which has hitherto sustained St. Michael’s 
and St. James’; and without which they must wither and 
decay; and if some reduction is indispensably demanded 
to give to each according to its just and merited claims, 
and to extend a fostering hand to the Churches generally 
on the Island, that such a deduction may embrace all 
without distinction, and may not be made by the invidious 
sacrifice of a few. Against such a decision there could 
properly neither be murmur or complaint. 

Whilst therefore the Churches and Congregations gen- 
erally on the Island, not of Trinity Corporation, are in- 
debted to the liberal patronage which has been extended 
in common towards them; we can indulge in the pleasing 
reflection that the individual Churches in whose behalf 
the appeal is now made, present their claims to your favor- 
able notice under the sanction of the additional and privi- 
leged character of lawful Children of a wealthy and impartial 
parent, soliciting from her that pecuniary relief which has 
hitherto been their support, and which we flatter ourselves 


58 Annals of St. Michael’s 


will be continued to them, distributively with her other 
and adopted Children. 
New York September 1825. 


Signed. 
7 Committee of St 
James F. DEePEysTER, Michael's Church. 


Committee of St. 


Davip WacGstTaFrF, James (Gee 


MartTIN HOFFMAN, 
EDWARD R. JONEs. 


It should be said, that for some years Trinity Cor- 
poration had found itself pecuniarily embarrassed. 
Mention of this is made in successive Convention 
reports, commencing about 1818. In 1822 attention is 
called to the fact that the new Christ Church was 
built without assistance from Trinity, because the 
latter Corporation was too straitened to grant such 
assistance. Withdrawal of the annual donation to St. 
Michael’s and St. James’s was part of a policy of re- 
trenchment, although several churches, which one would 
have thought better able to take care of themselves, 
continued to be assisted to a much later date, such as 
St. Stephen’s, Zion, St. Thomas’s, St. Andrew’s, and 
others. The result of the memorial was that Trinity 
Corporation voted to continue the original appro- 
priation for the current year, ending April 1, 1826, 
making the reduction commence with the following 
year. In point of fact, beginning on that date, the 
Trinity grant was diminished more than one-half, and 
by 1832 ceased altogether. 

One immediate result of the withdrawal of the 
Trinity subsidy was the closing of St. Michael’sCharity 
School, or rather the transfer of that school to the 
New York Public School Society. As already stated, 
it was, in the commencement of the nineteenth century, 


Religious Instruction in Schools 59 


regarded as the duty of churches of different denomina- 
tions to provide schools for the instruction of the poor 
in the principles of religion and knowledge; but, as it 
proved that there were many who could not go to 
pay schools and for whom no provision was made in 
these denominational schools, because they did not 
belong to the denominations maintaining the schools, 
therefore, the New York Free School Society was in- 
corporated in 1805, to provide schools for those for 
whom no provision was made at that time, and the first 
school of this Society was opened in 1807.1 While 
this society was professedly undenominational and 
while there were among its supporters members of 
various denominations, the real credit for the move- 
ment belongs to the Friends. The Society’s schools 
were eleemosynary, and, besides knowledge, clothes, 
food, and the like were distributed to the children. 
Largely as a result of this movement, both state and 
city began to contribute toward the support of public 
education in 1807, the money appropriated for this 
purpose from the excise tax, lotteries, and the like, 
being given to this society, along with the New York 
Orphan Asylum and a couple of other more limited 
organizations. While the schools of the Society were 
undenominational, arrangements were made in all of 
them for the religious instruction of the children. At 
one time the children went to the churches of their 
respective denominations with their monitors. At 
another time a committee of women taught the cate- 
chisms of the various denominations to the children in 
their respective schools on Tuesday afternoons. The 
method of instruction pursued in these schools was 
what was called the Lancasterian, or Monitorial sys- 


1 According to Palmer, The New York Public School, in 1806, 
in Madison Street, near Pearl. 


60 Annals of St. Michael’s 


tem, which was economical, in that it required few 
teachers in proportion to the number of children, and 
was supposed to be especially efficient, because the 
children who were monitors enjoyed a peculiar oppor- 
tunity to perfect their knowledge by teaching others, 
while the younger children were supposed to learn 
better from one of their own number than from an 
adult teacher. 

In 1812 an act was passed apportioning the school 
fund not only to the schools of the Free School Society, 
the New York Orphan Asylum and other organizations 
theretofore receiving assistance from that source, but 
also “to such incorporated religious societies in said 
city as now support or hereafter shall establish charity 
schools within the said city who might apply for the 
same,’’ the money so appropriated to be used, however, 
only for teachers’ salaries. This was a recognition of 
the charity schools maintained by the different churches 
and which had, up to this time, been supported by the 
private contributions of the members of those churches. 
It was also an inducement to other churches to estab- 
lish such schools. 

Payments under this act began in 1815 and in that 
year we find the first mention in the report to Conven- 
tion of a charity school in connection with St. Michael’s 
Church. This was, however, at that time, apparently 
a very insignificant thing, a personal venture of the 
rector, Mr. Jarvis. The following year the matter was 
taken up by the Vestry, and, at a meeting held 
November 27, 1816, the following resolutions were 
passed : 

That Whereas by the Fourth Section of an Act Supple- 
mentary to an Act for the establishment of Common 
Schools, passed March 12, 1812, by the Legislature of 


ee ee owe eS 


| 
a 
d 
‘ 
* 
; 
L 
vy 


St. Michael’s Charity School 61 


this State, it is provided that the School Commissioners 
appointed by the Common Council of the City of New York 
shall on or before the rst day of May in each year, distri- 
bute and pay the monies appropriated by said Act, to the 
support of Common Schools in said City to the Trustees 
of such incorporated religious Societies in said City, as 
now support or hereafter shall establish Charity Schools 
within the said City who may apply for the same, and 
such distribution shall be made to each School, in pro- 
‘portion to the average number of children between the 
ages of four and fifteen years, taught there in the year 
preceding such distribution free of expense. 

And Whereas it is further provided That no money shall 
be distributed by the Commissioners aforesaid to the 
Trustees of such Charity Schools as shall not have been 
kept for the term of at least 9 months, during the year 
preceding such distribution as aforesaid. 

Therefore be it Resolved by the Rector, Wardens & 
Vestrymen of St. Michael’s Church Bloomingdale, . that 
they will establish a Charity School, to be known and 
distinguished by the name of “St. Michael’s Charity 
School,” of which the Rector, Wardens & Vestrymen 
of said Church for the time being shall be Trustees, and 
that they will take immediate measures for the erection of 
a suitable house, for the accommodation of the teacher 
& family, as well as for that of the Children, and also for 
the support of the teacher, for one year agreeably to the 
provisions of the act. 

Resolved further that a subscription paper be presented 
in the name of the Corporation of St. Michael’s Church to 
the members of the Congregation, & to all other char- 
itable individuals, who may be disposed to aid so benevo- 
lent a design, that the Rev. Rector and Wm. Weyman 
be appointed a Committee to carry these resolutions into 
effect. 


From a report made to the Vestry, April 11, 1818, 


62 Annals of St. Michael’s 


it seems that this school was, in fact, organized May 
6, 1817, with Mr. William Morgan as teacher, at a 
salary of $400; and that from subscription list and 
communion alms $260 had been raised for the support 
of the school. The school sessions lasted through the 
entire year and were divided into four quarters. Dur- 
ing the first quarter, May to August, the number of 
scholars is reported as 26, 18 boys and 8 girls; for the 
second quarter, August to November, 30 scholars, 21 
boys and 9 girls; for the third quarter, November 1817 
to February 1818, 44 scholars, 28 boys and 16 girls, 
and for the fourth quarter 45 scholars, 29 boys and 
16 girls. 

In 1817 the vestry of St. James’s Church also voted 
to organize a Charity School and appointed a commit- 
tee to raise funds. It would appear, however, from 
the Convention reports, that while Mr. Jarvis conducted 
a school for the blacks in Yorkville, no parish charity 
school was at that time established in connection with 
St. James’s. In 1822, after Mr. Richmond became rec- 
tor, the Vestry petitioned the city corporation for a 
gift of land for an ““ Academy or Free School.”’ Appar- 
ently their request was refused, for in the following 
year the school committee was authorized to lease 
ground east of the church. In 1825 the school com- 
mittee reports itself unable to make further progress, 
and is discharged, and a new committee appointed, 
which is authorized to lease land and build a school. 
Evidently up to this time no school had been estab- 
lished. In the following year the committee again 
reported no progress, and was authorized to enlarge 
itself by adding to its number from the neighbors not 
members of the Church. With this change the matter 
passed out of the control of the vestry and became a 


Sectarian Controversy 63 


neighborhood affair, and on this basis Mr. Richmond 
finally succeeded in establishing the Yorkville School 
on 86th Street, between 4th and 5th avenues.! He 
was for a long time the most active trustee of this 
school and for some years its treasurer; his principal 
supporter in the work being Dr. A. V. Williams of 
St. Michael’s Vestry. Mr. Richmond also extended his 
educational activities to Manhattanville, receiving the 
same intelligent support from a few members of St. 
Michael’s Vestry, notably Dr. Williams. On the very 
day on which St. Mary’s Church was fully organized 
by the election of Mr. Richmond as rector, Dec. 27, 
1823, it was resolved to establish the Free School 
of St. Mary’s Church in the village of Manhattanville, 
and under the act of legislature of March 28, 1820, 
a claim was made upon the trustees of the Harlem 
Commons Fund for $2500 for that purpose, and, in the 
following year, it was voted that the school should be 
open equally to all denominations. The Manhattan- 
ville school was, in fact, established on the same basis 
as the Yorkville school, as a neighborhood enterprise, 
under trustees, and open to all denominations. Re- 
ferring to the attitude assumed by Mr. Richmond, with 
Dr. Williams and his other supporters, in both those 
enterprises, a writer in the local paper, the Northender, 
in 1867, says: 

In the Ward Board of School Officers and in the Board 
of Education, as also in other Departments connected 
with the general diffusion of knowledge, the members of 
this congregation have always favored a general plan, 
distinguished from a narrow and sectarian course of edu- 
cation, as the correct policy of liberal Christians and legal 
American citizens. 

1 It was destroyed in the draft riots of July, 1863. 


64 Annals of St. Michael’s 


These two schools were finally discontinued after 
many years of usefulness, when the general school 
system of the city was extended to the Yorkville and 
Manhattanville districts. 

St. Michael’s Charity School had a somewhat dif- 
ferent history. The distribution of the public funds 
to religious organizations finally resulted in sectarian 
strife. In 1822 the trustees of the Bethlehem Baptist 
Church in DeLancey Street obtained from the Legisla- 
ture a special act authorizing them to use any surplus 
from their appropriation for the instruction of teachers, 
erection of buildings, etc. This was regarded as an 
effort to obtain an increased appropriation for the 
benefit of the sectarian propaganda of that church, to 
enable it to enlarge its plant and in other ways promote 
its distinctly religious work. The Free School Society, 
with a number of the other churches, petitioned the 
Legislature to repeal the bill, and a factional and sec- 
tarian fight resulted. Finally, in 1824, the Legislature 
placed the matter of the distribution of the school funds 
in the hands of the Common Council of New York, and 
in the following year the Common Council passed an 
ordinance providing that no appropriation should be 
made from those funds to religious societies. While 
not affecting the Yorkville and Manhattanville Schools, 
this meant the discontinuance of St. Michael’s Charity 
School, which depended in large part on the public 
appropriation. Heretofore the Vestry had appropri- 
ated each year a small sum to make up the deficiency 
not provided for by subscription, but, with the dis- 
continuance of the Trinity donation, the Vestry would 
be unable to make any appropriation for such a pur- 
pose, much less to carry the whole burden of the school. 

A committee of the Vestry was at once appointed to 


Public School No. 9 65 


confer with the trustees of the New York Free School 
Society, and in the following year an arrangement was 
entered into with that society “to have the school 
attached to this parish kept open, as usuai, but under 
the direction of the trustees of the Public Schools,! 
who had provided a tutor and superintended his 
duties; that this committee had further agreed with the 
trustees to continue the school in the same manner, 
provided they did the like on their part by gratui- 
tously furnishing the preceptor and attending to the 
performance of his duties.” This arrangement was 
reported to the vestry meeting of December 21, 1826, 
but it had already gone into effect some time before 
that date, Mr. Morgan, the teacher of the school hav- 
ing resigned on April 1st of that year. Mention is 
made of this transaction in the minutes of the Public 
School Society of New York, May 12, 1826, in which 
the school is described as being “about six miles from 
this city attached to St. Michael’s Church.” It ap- 
pears from the record that the trustees of the society 
felt a certain moral responsibility in regard to this 
school, as they had been chiefly responsible for the 
cutting off of public moneys from Church schools, 
and at the same time, as it contained no more than 
sixty children of both sexes, its maintenance was 
regarded as “‘a very considerable tax on the funds of the 
Society.”” With the change of control the name was 
changed from St. Michael’s Charity School to Public 
School No. g, and St. Michael’s School was, therefore, 
directly the parent of our present Public School No. g. 
For the first few years after the change the school seems 
to have been continued in the same place or neighbor- 

1In 1826 the name of the New York Free School Society was 
changed to the Public School Society of New York. 

5 


66 Annals of St. Michael’s 


hood as before; but in 1830 a new building was erected 
on 82nd Street, and what is now West End Avenue, 
about midway between the two Bloomingdale centres 
at St. Michael’s and the Bloomingdale Reformed 
Church, and to this building the school was removed 
in 1830. 

It may be added that the same denominational diffi- 
culties which had caused the withdrawal of public 
appropriations from church schools, ultimately led to 
their withdrawal from the trustees of the New York 
Public School Society also. That organization, while 
nominally undenominational, was thoroughly Protest- 
ant. With the increase of foreign immigrants of Roman 
Catholic connection in the city, the latter began to 
demand a share of the school fund for their schools. 
The first fight was waged over the Orphan Asylum 
in 1831, the Roman Catholics demanding that their 
orphan asylum should be placed on the same footing 
as the Protestant institution. A decade later they 
demanded an appropriation for their parochial schools, 
alleging with considerable justice the denominational 
and sectarian character of some of the text-books used 
in the public schools of that day. Finally in 1842, 
as a result of their demands, the State Common School 
system was extended to New York City, and the public 
appropriation to private schools withdrawn altogether. 
For the next few years the city had two systems of 
public schools, those under the care of the trustees of 
the New York Public School Society, which continued 
to be maintained by private subscription, and those 
directly under the authority of the State. At last in 
January, 1853, the two systems were united in our 
present public school system. 

The withdrawal of the annual Trinity donation, 


The Church of the Rich 67 


while for a time it hampered the parish, causing also 
the abandonment of the charity school, proved ulti- 
mately to be a blessing in disguise. Forced to provide 
for itself and not to depend upon others, the parish 
did not “wither and decay,’’ as the memorialists had 
feared it would, but grew and thrived. Successive 
treasurers’ reports (and the treasurer, Mr. James F. 
DePeyster, was a very careful manager, to whom is 
due much credit for the financial soundness of the 
church), show that the church managed to maintain 
a balance between receipts and expenditures, generally 
with a very small margin of credit. But at the same 
time the regular expenses of the church were not cur- 
tailed. Little by little the salary of the rector was 
increased and various repairs and improvements made 
as occasion demanded. The main support of the 
church was the income from the Trinity endowment 
which, in spite of the long leases, was gradually in- 
creasing. In 1817, it is true the Vestry had decided to 
double the pew-rents; but apparently the pewholders 
had refused to consent; for, in 1836, we find the Vestry 
again voting to increase the pew rentals to $10. But 
if the amount contributed for the support of its own 
services was not all that could be desired, apparently 
a more healthy sense of responsibility for the work of 
the Church was being developed in the congregation. 
In 1835 Mr. Richmond reports to Convention a con- 
tribution of $2000 from the church for special objects,, 
presumably the new free church work which he was. 
about to start, and in 1840 Rev. James Richmond 
reports $1933 contributed for Jubilee College, which. 
Bishop Chase was just founding in Illinois. 

In 1830 Bishop Onderdonk succeeded Bishop Hobart: 
as Bishop of New York, and with his consecration a new- 


68 Annals of St. Michael’s 


era commenced in the church work of New York City 
and St. Michael’s parish. Up to this time the Episco- 
pal Church in New York had been the church of the 
rich and fashionable, and while charity schools were 
conducted in a number of parishes for the children of 
the poorer classes, there was no place in the parish 
churches for clerks, mechanics, artisans, and the like, 
much less for the very poor. With the increase of the 
city many young men, sometimes with their families, 
were flocking in from other places, who, finding no 
church home to welcome them, became careless or 
drifted away from the Church and religion altogether. 
If these persons were to be reached it was plain that 
something must be provided different from our churches 
as then organized. 

To meet this want the New York Protestant Episco- 
pal City Mission Society was founded in 1831, with the 
Bishop of the Diocese as its head, the Rector of Grace 
Church as chairman of the Executive Committee, and 
the Vicar of St. John’s Chapel as secretary. The pur- 
pose of this society was to provide “free sittings 
in mission churches for a large class of Episcopalians 
and others disposed to become members of the Church, 
who were at that time virtually excluded from parish 
churches, the class referred to comprising the families 
of poorer mechanics, widows, merchants’ clerks, jour- 
neymen, apprentices, domestics and others unable to 
pay for sittings, besides strangers, emigrants, etc.’’? 
The society “‘ applied for and received from the Legisla- 
ture an unusually liberal charter,” leaving it “un- 
limited as to income or property except by the demands 
of the charity itself.’”’ In the Convention of the same 
year it was recognized by canon as the diocesan agent 


1 Final Report, 1847. 


The First Free Church 69 


for missionary operations within the city, and a further 
canon was passed enjoining an annual collection in the 
city churches for its support. The society went into 
operation at once and soon became owner by purchase 
and gift, of “three large, commodious church build- 
ings,” the Holy Evangelists in Van de Water Street, 
by purchase in 1831, the Epiphany, erected by the 
society in 1834, and St. Matthew’s in Christopher 
Street, by gift, in 1842. 

At the same time that this society was established 
to start free mission chapels, in 1831, St. Mary’s 
Church was made free. In his report to the Conven- 
tion of that year Mr. Richmond says that he had been 
induced to take charge of this church in 1828, in ad- 
dition to his other duties, on account of its pecuniary 
embarrassments. ‘‘ There were at that time very few 
families in the village in the habit of attending service. 
The church is now generally filled every Sunday and 
a considerable congregation has been present at the 
service and during the instruction of the Bible class 
on Wednesday.” He obtained a missionary subscription 
of $50 each from six city rectors, with which to engage 
an assistant to officiate once on Sunday in St. Mary’s 
and once in the village of Harlem. By means of this 
subscription, which amounted in all to $600, he was 
able to engage Mr. Hinton for this work, and the 
church of St. Andrew’s had been erected in Harlem. 
In addition to this he had raised the sum of $1000, 
which had been applied to work in St. Mary’s parish to 
defray the current expenses of the church and Sunday- 
school, to pay the interest on the mortgage and procure 


1In his Convention address of 1835, Bishop Onderdonk men- 
tions the consecration of St. Paul’s Free Church, Brooklyn, and 
speaks of it as the first free church in the diocese. Actually this 
honor belonged to St. Mary’s, Manhattanville. 


70 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the necessary repairs and improvements. His own 
services, aS appears elsewhere, were given gratuitously, 
and, in point of fact, he was a large contributor to the 
‘support of the work at St. Mary’s. St. Mary’s was, 
to all intents and purposes, a mission station of St. 
Michael’s Church at this time, although organized as an 
independent parish. The aristocratic pewholders of 
the mother church were not prepared to make the 
latter free (in fact the idea of a free parish church 
does not seem to have been seriously proposed as yet) : 
but they were willing to make St. Mary’s, which was 
intended for the poorer population of Manhattanville 
and its neighborhood, free on the same principle on 
which, later, through the influence of the City Mission 
Society, other churches were to establish free chapels. 

In the following year, 1832, came the first dreadful 
visitation of cholera, from which 3500 people died, 
Mr. Hinton, the rector of St. Andrew’s, being among 
the victims.1 Mr. Richmond’s activity in caring for 
the sick at this period attracted much attention. The 
city made him a health officer for his ward, with full 
power to spend and order as he found it necessary for 
the public health and the especial wants of the sick. 
Later, when he was leaving St. Michael’s Church to 
take charge of Zion, the Vestry addressed to him a 
letter, which was also published in the Churchman, 
containing this passage: 


We have found you at all times active, devoted and 
distinguished in your exertions for the welfare of your 
flock. Not deterred by the noisome pestilence, you have 
visited the sick, & fed the hungry, clothed the naked, a friend 
without faltering, kind, courteous & humane. Devoted to the 


1The next two years were also cholera years, although the mor- 
tality was not so great. 


The Neglected Poor 71 


great cause, you have labored with a spirit that never 
sought repose. To the poor you have preached the Gospel 
of Truth. 


In the same year, 1832, Mr. Richmond began holding 
services on Sunday evenings at the Bloomingdale 
Lunatic Asylum, Rev. James M. Forbes, who appears 
on the Convention records as an assistant minister 
at St. Luke’s, assisting him both here and at St. Ann’s, 
Fort Washington. These services, which were at 
first an experiment suggested by Mr. Richmond out 
of the same spirit which had made him the minister 
to the cholera victims, proved so successful that, in 
the following year, they received official recognition 
from the trustees of the New York Hospital; Mr. Rich- 
mond was made chaplain and a stipend of $75 attached 
to the office. From that time until the removal of 
the institution to White Plains, the rectors of St. 
Michael’s continued to be chaplains of the Blooming- 
dale Asylum. The services at Bloomingdale may be 
said to be the commencement of the work of our Church 
in the public institutions, although some years were to 
pass before other institutions were added, and finally 
a regular organization established for the conduct 
of that work. What an innovation religious services 
in an asylum were at that time is shown by the Bishop’s 
reference to this work, in his Convention address of 
1834, after a visit paid to St. Michael’s, in which Mr. 
Richmond took him to the asylum: 


The services of the Chaplain in this interesting estab- 
lishment (Lunatic Asylum) are found to produce a soothing 
and comforting, and, it is hoped, through the Grace of God, 
a holy influence on the minds of the unfortunate objects 
of Christian sympathy for whom they are designed. The 
introduction of judiciously conducted religious exercises 


72 Annals of St. Michael’s 


into such establishments, is among the best of those im- 
provements in the treatment of the insane, which raise 
our asylums to an eminence so exalted, in the estimation of 
reason, sensibility, and religion, above the cells of wretched- 
ness, terror and withering despair to which they were 
formerly consigned. 


One of the results of the work of the City Mission 
Society was to call attention to the failure of the Church 
up to this time to fulfil its Christian mission. It had 
preached the Gospel not to the poor, but to the rich. 
In his diocesan address of 1834, Bishop Onderdonk 
states the case strongly and effectively in the following 
words: 


Thousands still wander through our streets, to whom the 
Gospel—its word and its Church—are as strange as if there 
were a broad wall of adamant between it and them. Our 
ordinary churches, so far from inviting, virtually exclude 
them. Let them, then, indulge me, when I say that, easy 
as they may feel in the enjoyment of these spiritual 
privileges for which they liberally pay in their well furnished 
places of worship, there rests on them a heavy burden of 
responsibility touching the poor against whom those places 
are virtually barred. 


It had proved that there were great numbers of 
people who were not reached by the eleemosynary 
mission chapels, an independent and self-respecting 
class, who could not afford to worship in the fashionable 
and exclusive pewed churches, but who might be capable 
of supporting independent churches of a more modest 
type if such could be created. Toward the provision 
of churches for this class of the community the Bishop 
directed attention in an interesting letter in the Church- 
man in 1836. 

Among those who were convinced of the need of 


Bishop Advocates Free Churches 73 


establishing churches for this class of the community 
was the Rev. William Richmond who was beginning 
to come to the conclusion, if he had not done so already, 
that Christian churches should be free on principle. 
His brother James had assisted him at St. Michael’s 
from time to time, both prior to his ordination and 
also after that event, in 1834. Mr. Richmond now 
requested from the vestries of St. Michael’s, St. James’s, 
and St. Mary’s the latter’s appointment as his assistant, 
he to be responsible for his salary, with right of suc- 
cession to the rectorship in case of vacancy. His re- 
quest was granted but with much reluctance, and 
Rev. William Richmond turned his energies to the 
organization of a free church on the lines suggested 
by the Bishop. The headquarters of this movement 
were at Euterpean Hall, 410 Broadway, and the name 
given to the infant church was the Church of the Re- 
demption. Mr. Richmond speedily collected a con- 
siderable body of worshippers, and in his Convention 
address of 1836, the Bishop refers to him as 
engaged 

in forming a free church in this city, that is, a church 
which is to be supported, not by pew-rents, but by the 
voluntary contributions of its attendants—the pews being 
all free. Such an establishment appears to be required 
in our city. There are those who object, on principle, to 
rendering the privilege of attendance at church dependent 
on the payment of a tax, and to graduating the eligibleness 
of situation in church for the comfortable hearing and 
seeing of the holy offices, by the ability of the worshippers 
to make a pecuniary return. There are very many highly 
respectable persons in circumstances too moderate to 
allow of their paying either the price or rent of good pews 
in our ordinary churches, but who are still anxious to pay 
what they can, and as they can, for the privilege of be- 


74 Annals of St. Michaeke 


longing to a regularly organized portion of our ecclesiastical 
body, and are therefore, not improperly, reluctant to 
avail themselves of the accommodations provided by 
the hand of charity in our mission churches. There is 
constantly in this great metropolis a large body of strangers 
not permanently resident here, belonging to either our 
own communion or that of the Church of England, who 
find themselves often very painfully situated. They love 
the services of our sanctuaries and are desirous to attend 
them, and to have an opportunity of contributing, in the 
incidental way which only is open to them, to their support. 
They feel, however, a very natural repugnance to obtruding 
themselves into pews belonging to others. And it is 
obvious that the presence of many such as are always 
with us in our mission churches, would present much the 
same difficulty in the way of their being occupied by the 
poor, which, in other Churches, was deemed so strong a 
reason for the establishment of those of a missionary 
character. For this large and respectable class of our 
fellow Christians provision should be made. The making 
of it is the most important object had in view by the pro- 
posed erection of free churches, and I know is regarded as 
a most valuable provision by our brethren in the country, 
and will doubtless receive from them, in their occasional 
visits to the city, no small share of its support. And while 
the establishment of this species of church is thus a most 
excellent object in itself, it produces also a highly valuable 
indirect effect. There are so many whose views, or con- 
veniences, or interests, are met by churches in which the pews 
are free, that there is perpetual danger of the admirably- 
designed charity of our mission churches being diverted 
from its proper channel. Places of worship, therefore, 
not sustained by charity, but thrown on the voluntary 
support of the attendants, will, it is hoped, allow the 
experiment of mission churches to be fairly tried; and thus 
to let it be seen whether the impression, that there is among 
us a large body of poor to be thus provided for, and who 


Five Points 75 


will avail themselves of the provision, which gave rise 
to this excellent charity, is founded on fact. 


Strange as it may seem to-day, Mr. Richmond’s 
new enterprise met with considerable opposition on 
the part of some of the city pastors. They seem to 
have felt that the establishment of free churches 
threatened the financial foundations of the Church, 
and they claimed that the enterprise was immoral, 
because people who could and should pay as pew-rent 
a proper sum for the support of a church, would, by 
the free church system, be led to attend churches where 
no payment was required and so get the Gospel for 
nothing. The following year, 1837, having made an 
arrangement with Zion Church, on behalf of his new 
Church of the Redemption, by which he was to become 
the rector of Zion Church, the congregation of the 
Church of the Redemption receiving free seats in the 
gallery of that church, Mr. Richmond resigned the 
rectorship of St. Michael’s, to the evident great regret of 
the Vestry, evinced by the terms of their very touching 
communication to him on that occasion, and Rev. James 
Richmond became rector in his stead. Mr. Richmond 
evidently hoped ultimately to make Zion Church 
itself free, and thus establish at least one strong, 
independent free church, in New York. Moreover, the 
situation of that church, on Mott and Cross Streets, 
with Five Points in its immediate vicinity, appealed 
strongly to his missionary zeal. Five Points was at 
that time, and for many years later, the centre of the 
misery and crime of the city. It had been the focus 
and breeding ground of the riots of 1835, and six years 
later Dickens thus described its horrors: 


Near the Tombs, Worth, Baxter, and Park Streets came 


76 Annals of St. Michael’s 


together, making five corners or points of varying sharp- 
ness, hence the name “Five Points.’’ It was an unwhole- 
some district, supplied with a few rickety buildings, and 
thickly peopled with human beings of every age, color, and 
condition. 

An old brewery built long before the City hove in sight 
on its northern route, tottering, with yawning seams in 
its walls, and broken glass windows, sheltered daring out- 
laws, and furnished a place of rendezvous for the vilest of 
the vile. The police were dismayed and discouraged, 
With the history of the old brewery are associated some 
of the most appalling crimes ever perpetrated. The ar- 
rival of every emigrant ship rendered this plague spot 
hideous. City missionaries joined in the humanizing work 
to make successful efforts to reclaim this spot. 


The convention reports of St. Michael’s, St. James’s, 
and St. Mary’s during the next few years show a 
development of the missionary work which Mr. Rich- 
mond had begun in those parishes. So, under date 
of 1837, Rev. James Richmond reports to Convention 
that he conducts five services on Sunday in and around 
Bloomingdale, on Friday evenings he officiates at 
Yorkville, and occasionally he preaches at St. Timothy’s, 
the new German church started the preceding year. 
This latter represented an effort on the part of the 
Church to meet its responsibilities toward the new im- 
migration from the north of Europe, which was setting 
strongly toward this country, and for whose benefit a 
translation of the prayer-book into German was made 
at this time. Rev. James Richmond’s thorough ac- 
quaintance with the German language made him natur- 
ally one of the leaders in any effort to provide services 
for the German population, and he did not confine 
his efforts to St. Timothy’s only, but preached in 
German occasionally in St. Michael’s also, for Germans 


An Unexplained Resignation ray 


were beginning to appear in considerable numbers in 
the upper part of the island. On Whitsunday, 1837, 
he conducted a German service at St. Michael’s, of 
which he reports that “there was a great attendance.” 

Rev. William Richmond had been assisted at times 
in conducting his large work, with services at so many 
and such distant points, by volunteers. A school or 
seminary under Church influences was established in 
Bloomingdale in 1819, the head teacher in which was 
a clergyman, Rev. William Powell, from 1819 to 1821, 
and the Rev. Augustus Fitch from 1821 to 1835. 
These men gave their services, apparently gratuitously, 
Mr. Fitch at one time becoming, for a brief period, 
rector of St. Ann’s Church, Fort Washington. Rev. 
James Richmond was able to call to his support even 
more volunteer assistants of this description. Shortly 
after the ordination of Bishop Onderdonk, in 1831, 
the Protestant Episcopal Public School Society had 
been established and an elementary school founded, 
of which Rev. J. B. Van Ingen was superintendent. In 
1837 this association founded Trinity School, the first 
principal of which was Rev. William Morris. He 
became at the same time an assistant at St. Michael’s 
Church. Through his assistance Mr. Richmond was 
able to extend his work, and in that year he re- 
ports six services held on each Sunday, including 
the service at the Bloomingdale Asylum; he is further 
about to undertake additional work at Yorkville, and 
St. Mary’s Church, Manhattanville, is to be opened in 
the morning as well as in the evening. In the follow- 
ing year the Rev. Caleb Clapp, a teacher in a female 
seminary in Astoria, L. I., is added to the staff which 
is assisting Mr. Richmond in his missionary work. A 
year later the Rev. James Sunderland, also a teacher 


78 Annals of St. Michael’s 


somewhere in New York, is added to this missionary 
staff, and the rector of St. Michael’s, St. James’s, and 
St. Mary’s, with this staff of assistants drawn from 
schools, giving their services, apparently, without 
charge, is conducting an active and aggressive mission- 
ary work in the entire upper portion of the island, ex- 
cluding Harlem, which was a parish by itself. 

There is reason to believe that, in spite of his mission- 
ary enthusiasm, which commended him strongly to 
the poorer classes, Rev. James Cook Richmond was 
not altogether so acceptable to the well-to-do and re- 
spectable pewholders of St. Michael’s and St. James’s. 
He was essentially a preaching friar, and soon became 
restive under parochial restraints. In October of 
1841 he made application for a leave of absence, which 
was granted, with the understanding that failure to 
return by Easter of 1842 should in itself constitute 
his resignation. At the same time Rev. William 
Richmond was appointed assistant of St. Michael’s and 
St. James’s, to take charge of those churches during his 
brother’s absence, and with right of succession to the 
rectorship in case of the latter’s failure to return. 
Rev. James Richmond did in fact return to the country 
before the time named, but neither came to Blooming- 
dale nor resumed his parochial duties at St. Michael’s 
and St. James’s. No reason was ever assigned. Ap- 
parently not wishing to resume the charge and feeling 
that the vestries of those churches did not wish him 
to do so, he accepted this as an opportunity of sever- 
ing his parochial relations. After waiting until June, 
the Vestry of St. Michael’s declared him to be no longer 
rector, by virtue of the arrangement above mentioned. 
St. James’s, in answer to a letter addressed to him 
by its vestry, received a formal resignation. 


CHAPTER IV 


The Second Rectorship of Rev. William Richmond, 1842-1858, 
with some Account of the strange Wilderness which became 
Central Park. 


N the resignation of the Rev. James Richmond, 
() his brother, Rev. William Richmond, was again » 
called to be rector of the twin churches of St. 
Michael and St. James. He was already rector of Zion 
Church, and did not wish to give up that cure and the 
missionary work which he had begun in connection 
with it. It would be impossible to take charge of St. 
Michael’s and St. James’s in addition to Zion, but he 
felt that he could, with the help of an assistant, take 
charge of one of those churches and still retain his 
city cure. Accordingly, while resuming the rectorship 
of St. Michael’s, he resigned that of St. James’s Church 
Omjune 1%, 2642. At the same time Draven) V. 
Williams, who had become a member of St. James’s 
vestry and clerk of the same in 1831, apparently for 
the purpose of assisting Mr. Richmond in his mission- 
ary and educational work in Yorkville, resigned from 
the vestry of that parish. Rev. John C. Dowdney was 
appointed rector of St. James’s, and to him Mr. Rich- 
mond turned over also the church which he had organ- 
ized in Yorkville and in general all his missionary and 
educational work in that region; and here the con- 
79 


80 Annals of St. Michael’s 


nection, so long maintained between St. Michael’s 
and St. James’s came to an end, except that for a brief 
period Mr. Dowdney assisted Mr. Richmond at St. 
Michael’s and St. Mary’s. 

For three years Mr. Richmond maintained his double 
position as rector of Zion and St. Michael’s, residing 
during the summer in Bloomingdale and during the 
winter living at a boarding-house in the city—first 
on the Battery and then in Greenwich Street where 
boarding-houses were beginning to occupy the fashion- 
able residences as their former occupants moved north- 
ward. But this arrangement did not prove satisfactory. 
Zion Church felt that it was entitled to and required 
the entire services of a rector; and Mr. Richmond, 
on his side, felt that the experiment which he had made 
in Zion Church was not successful. He had not been 
able to convert the vestry to his free church ideas; 
the old pewholding population had moved away; and 
the missionary work which had been so successful in the 
first years of his rectorship was dwindling for lack of 
supporters. Finally, in 1845, he resigned the rector- 
ship of Zion Church, confining himself for a time to 
the growing work at St. Michael’s, with St. Mary’s, 
Manhattanville. 

This was a period of considerable change and de- 
velopment in the church and city. The diocese had 
grown so rapidly that, in 1838, the western part of the 
state, consisting of the present dioceses of Central 
and Western New York, was set apart to form a new 
diocese. At the same time the bishopric of New York 
itself was placed upon a more secure and dignified 
foundation than heretofore, a fund being created for 
its support, so that the bishop might give his whole 
time to his Episcopal work, and not be obliged to act 


AYLSAA FHL 4O SHYR1ID OML 
ZOBL-LbBL “SWVITTIIM “A “Vv “YG 6€8l-Sesl “Yr ‘YALSAadaq MOlMaGsus 


The Aqueduct 81 


at the same time as Rector of Trinity Church, like 
Bishops Provoost, Moore, and Hobart, or professor 
in the General Theological Seminary, like Bishop 
Onderdonk. 

The city was growing rapidly and new churches were 
coming into existence almost every year. At the same 
time the population was moving northward. In 1843 
Grace Church purchased its present site, on roth Street 
and Broadway; and within the next few years most 
of the older churches, deserted by their former con- 
stituency, had sold their down-town land and buildings 
and moved farther up, some of them to their present 
sites, others to an intermediate location. Blooming- 
dale felt the effects of the change of conditions and 
shifting of population during this period to a remarkable 
degree. At the outset of Mr. Richmond’s second 
rectorship it was still the old Bloomingdale of country 
homes. By the end of that period the summer popu- 
lation had almost entirely disappeared, and a poorer, 
if more numerous, class of residents was beginning to 
take its place. 

In 1836 the New York Orphan Asylum, formerly 
located on Greenwich Street, moved into its new build- 
ing at 73d St. and the North River. In 1843 the Leake 
and Watts Orphan Asylum, on the present site of the 
Cathedral, was completed. During the intervening 
period Bloomingdale was torn up by the construction 
of the Croton aqueduct. Commenced in 1837, this was 
completed in 1842, with its two reservoirs at Murray 
Hill, on 42d Street, then “a short drive from the city,” 
and York Hill, now in Central Park. The line of the 
aqueduct cut through several of the old country places, 
and may be said to have been the first disturbance 
of Bloomingdale by the march of public improvement. 

6 


82 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Carried underground through the Manhattanville valley, 
and up the hill to the south, along the line of what is 
now Amsterdam Avenue to about 113th Street, it there 
became a causeway, elevated above the ground. This 
began to bend eastward at about 1o8th Street, and 
became, as it crossed the valley below 1o4th Street, 
a monumental structure, resembling the old Roman 
aqueducts, higher than the tops of the highest houses 
and pierced, toward the centre of the valley, with 
arched passage-ways for roads. Below the ge2d 
Street hill it again became a causeway, and finally 
disappeared beneath the surface at about 84th Street. 
It constituted at most parts of its course an impassable 
barrier, traversed only at rare intervals by roads, which 
surmounted it by means of steep hills or were carried 
underneath by archways, or by foot-paths which 
ascended the sides by steps. It was built as though 
for eternity, few realizing that in the comparatively 
near future the neighborhood would be so built up as 
to require more frequent means of communication and 
that the aqueduct, constructed in so monumental a 
manner, would prove an actual obstruction to progress. 

The construction of the aqueduct led to the official 
opening of certain streets and avenues, including Tenth 
Avenue. At first it was supposed that this avenue 
was actually to be opened as a street throughout its 
entire length, and in the Vestry minutes of May 3, 
1838, there is notice of the appointment of a com- 
mittee for the purchase of a site to which the church, 
then on the line of the avenue, might be removed. 
In point of fact, as already stated, the aqueduct, 
southward of 108th Street, was carried obliquely 
“through the block,’ and consequently Tenth Avenue 
was not opened below that point until after 1870. 


Hudson River Railroad 83 


In point of fact it did not prove necessary to remove 
the church, but damages for the opening, amounting to 
about $4000, were awarded to St. Michael’s Church 
at that time, in the form of water stock, and proved a 
very welcome addition to its property. 

The movement of the city northward was greatly 
accelerated by the invention of horse cars. The first 
horse car company in the world, the New York and 
Harlem, was incorporated in 1830, and the first cars 
were run on that road as far as Murray Hill in 1832. 
This was followed in rapid succession by other horse 
car lines, none of which, in point of fact, reached Bloom- 
ingdale, but some of which made the lower part of 
that region more accessible to the city. One result 
of this increased accessibility was the laying out of a 
new settlement on the old Harsen farm at Blooming- 
dale Road and 71st Street. A guide book, published in 
1846', describes Bloomingdale as: 


A remarkably neat village of New York County, situ- 
ated on the left bank of the Hudson, five miles above the 
City Hall. An orphan asylum is established here. The 
village consists chiefly of country seats and contains some 
400 inhabitants. 


The village here described as Bloomingdale was this 
settlement, commonly called Harsenville. Manhat- 
tanville is described in the same volume as having 
500 inhabitants and “ Harlaem”’ 1500. 

But most important in its effects on the future of 
Bloomingdale was the construction of the Hudson 
River Railroad. This was incorporated in 1846, and 
in 1849 permission was granted to run the locomotives 
to 30th Street, which was on the outskirts of the city of 


1A Picture of New York. 


84 Annals of St. Michael’s 


that day,! and dummies below this to Chambers Street. 
The road was finally completed in 1851. It destroyed 
in large part the beauty of the country residences along 
the Hudson River and drove the occupants of those old 
homes to other regions. At the same time this, and 
the other railroads constructed at about the same time, 
with the telegraph,? made other regions, farther away 
in miles, more accessible to the city than Bloomingdale 
had ever been. The completion of the Hudson River 
Railroad may be said to mark the final stage in the 
change of character of Bloomingdale, which now ceased 
to be an aristocratic suburb of the city. This change 
Mr. Richmond refers to in his Convention reports, 
and it also makes itself felt in the Vestry lists. 

The Vestry records of this period contain little of 
interest, but show a steady increase in the receipts and 
expenses of the parish. In 1845 the rector’s salary 
was increased to $1400. After that it was added to 
every few years, until 1853, when it reached the sum 
of $2500; at which figure it remained stationary for a 
long time. In 1846 the belfry is in danger of falling 
down, and repairs are made at an expense of something 
over $300. From the treasurer’s report of that year 
it appears that the income of the church amounted to 
$1848.77, of which $1362.50 was derived from ground 
rents on the land endowment, $193.52 from interest 
on water stock, $232.75 from pew-rents, and $60 from 
burials. Among the expenses are recorded several 
bills for fuel, amounting in all to $26. The fuel still 


1 When the Church of the Transfiguration was built on 29th 
Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues, in 1849, “‘the view 
was unbroken to Madison Square below, and to Murray Hill above.” 

2 The first telegraph line out of New York, connecting that city 
with Philadelphia, was opened in 1847. 


Ritualistic Movement 85 


consisted of wood, and the church was heated by a stove; 
but the next year, 1847, a furnace was built at an 
expense of $611.03. In 1846 there is an increase of the 
appropriation for the choir of $50, “for the purpose of 
obtaining an additional female voice.”” In 1849 $100 
is appropriated for the same purpose, and Miss Pease 
is mentioned by name as the singer. By 1853 $250 is 
the regular salary of the organist. By the same date 
the salary of the sexton has risen to $175. 

Those were days when much needed improvements 
in the conduct of church services were beginning to be 
introduced. Heretofore there had been great theo- 
retical zeal for Prayer Book services and the usages 
of the Church as distinguished from the sects. Clergy- 
men who held services in all sorts of places and who 
used prayers not contained in the Prayer Book, or 
who adapted the Prayer Book services to special needs, 
were looked on with suspicion by the ordinary con- 
servative Churchman. But with the stiffness and 
conservatism of that day went what would seem to us 
great slovenliness and positive irreverence in the ar- 
rangement and treatment of their church buildings 
and the conduct of their services. Now, largely as a 
result of the Oxford movement, the services of the 
Church begin to be conducted in a more orderly and 
decent manner, and the church buildings to be beauti- 
fied and treated with greater reverence. Even the 
costume of the clergy underwent a change. Heretofore 
clergymen had been distinguished in their dress, when 
not performing clerical functions, principally, if at 
all, by a voluminous white neck-tie. In going to and 
from church and in visitation of the sick, they wore 
cassock and gown, with bands and scarf, and a pair of 
white silk gloves. Now they begin to assert their 


86 Annals of St. Michael’s 


clerical separateness by wearing out of church special 
clothes of a different cut from those worn by the 
ordinary citizen, while in church their robes become 
more ecclesiastical and more antique. The peculiar 
scarfs, given at funerals and worn afterwards by the 
clergyman in church, and the white gloves, with the 
first finger slit so as to enable the wearer to turn the 
pages of the Prayer Book and Bible, were dropped. 
Something of this movement toward ritual adornment 
and improvement one sees in the Convention addresses 
of Bishop Onderdonk. So, in 1836, he mentions, in 
connection with the consecration of two new churches 
at Medina and Geddes, the fact that they are the only 
churches in the diocese having crosses. In 1839 he 
notes with approval the institution of daily Morning 
and Evening Prayer in the churches at Astoria and 
Troy. The fact of his mention of these matters in such 
a manner shows the important place which they oc- 
cupied in the minds of the Churchmen of that period. 
They were matters of excited controversy. Party spirit 
ran high, and New York, as represented by its Bishop, 
was on the Ritualistic side. 

The students of the General Theological Seminary 
were strongly affected by this High Church movement. 
The influences of the school were in general High Church, 
and it came to be looked on with grave distrust in other 
parts of the country. The Carey incident, in 1843, 
aroused the general excitement to a high pitch. Mr. 
Carey graduated from the General Theological Seminary 
in 1842, and served as lay-reader in St. Peter’s Church. 
The rector of that church, Dr. Smith, alarmed at Mr. 
Carey’s acceptance of some of the Oxford doctrines, 
refused to sign his testimonials and joined with Dr. 
Anthon, rector of St. Mark’s Church, in a protest to the 


The Carey Incident 87 


Bishop against his ordination. After an examination 
of Mr. Carey, in which he was assisted by six Presbyters, 
including Drs. Smith and Anthon, the Bishop, finding 
nothing amiss in his views, decided to ordain him. 
The ordination was held in St. Stephen’s Church, 
Sunday, July 2, 1843. When the Bishop asked the 
- rubrical question: “If there be any of you who 
knoweth any impediment or notable crime,” etc., Dr. 
Smith and Dr. Anthon arose and read a solemn protest 
against Mr. Carey’s ordination, because he “holds 
things contrary to the doctrine of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in these United States and in 
close alliance with the errors of the Church of 
Rome.” 

Two years later, in 1845, Bishop Onderdonk was 
tried on a charge of immorality by a court of his peers, 
found guilty, and suspended. So strong was party 
feeling at the time, that many believed his prosecution 
and conviction on such charges to be a case of persecu- 
tion; and that his judges, being Low Churchmen, were 
prejudiced against him because of his High Church 
views. This feeling was especially strong in his own 
diocese, where he had rendered notable service in 
rousing the Church to its obligation to care for the 
poor and needy. Owing largely to this division of 
feeling, New York remained from 1845 to 1852 without 
a Bishop, to the great prejudice of the Church. Church 
work everywhere was hampered or checked altogether. 
The register of St. Michael’s parish reflects clearly the 
distressful conditions of this period. From 1845 to 
1852 only one confirmation is reported, namely, in 
1850, and no report of communicants is made during 
that time. Bishop Onderdonk’s condemnation was 
coincident with Mr. Richmond’s resignation of Zion 


88 Annals of St. Michael’s 


and seems to have had, also, some connection with 
that event. 

It was during this period of embittered party strife, 
of disorganization and lack of leadership, that, in 
1847, the City Mission Society, which Bishop Onder- 
donk had been instrumental in founding, passed out of 
existence. The reasons for this are set forth in the 
report of the Society to the Convention of that year, 
as follows: 


During the past year important changes have taken 
place in the form of missionary action among the city 
churches, leading to a suspension, at least, of the duties 
hitherto performed by this Society as their agent. The 
care of providing for the destitute within their own bounds 
has been, of late, assumed by the Parish churches them- 
selves; and their usual Missionary contributions, upon which 
the operations of the Society were altogether dependent, 
retained, consequently, for their own expenditure. Under 
this decision of the Churches, the Society was obviously 
left without means to carry on their operations; and had, 
consequently, no other choice left them than to bring 
them to a close, and to dispose of their Mission Churches 
in the mode most advantageous to the great cause in 
which for 15 years, they had faithfully labored. This they 
did, by transferring to the congregations worshipping there- 
in, their Church buildings respectively, for the balance of 
debt resting on them, securing as far as lay in their power, 
the condition of their being held forever as Free Churches. 


In point of fact, two of the churches founded by the 
City Mission Society continued to exist as free churches. 
The third, St. Matthew’s, passed out of existence. Trin- 
ity had withdrawn the annual appropriation to the 
City Mission Society, which it had made since 1831, 
varying in amount from $600 to $1800, and it refused 


Abandonment of City Missions 89 


to save St. Matthew’s from perishing. The whole 
matter aroused much feeling against Trinity corpora- 
tion among New York Churches and Churchmen, and 
led to the first attack upon it in the Legislature, as 
related elsewhere. But the work of the City Mission 
Society had not been in vain. It had aroused the 
Church in some degree to a sense of its obligations 
toward the less favored classes of the population. 
Some of the larger city parishes had established or 
were establishing free chapels of their own; and Dr. 
Muhlenberg was building the free church of the 
Holy Communion and commencing the great work 
connected with his name and with that parish. 

During the years from 1845 to 1847 there is no record 
of any special work undertaken by Mr. Richmond out- 
side of the parishes of St. Michael’s and St. Mary’s, 
with the Bloomingdale Asylum. This does not mean 
that he was idle. It was his habit to conduct services 
and preach four times, and sometimes five times a 
Sunday and conduct Sunday School besides. He was 
also an active and an interested member of the General 
Board of Missions, and on the minutes of the missionary 
committee of the diocese there is entered a “note of 
thanks for his activity and success in removing a large 
debt which threatened seriously to interfere with the 
continuance of some of its institutions.” ! 

Since the autumn of 1841, with an intermission from 
1843 to 1845, Mr. Thomas McClure Peters, a student 
in the seminary, had worked under Mr. Richmond as 
a lay reader, chiefly, if not altogether, at St. Mary’s, 
Manhattanville. In 1847 he was ordained deacon, 
married Mr. Richmond’s daughter, and became his 
assistant, technically at St. Mary’s Church, but in 


1Sermon of Rev. C. B. Smith. 


fe) Annals of St. Michael’s 


reality in the whole work of the parish. He had felt 
the influence of the ecclesiastical, High Church, Oxford 
movement on the one side and of the missionary, 
humanitarian, and progressive movements, represented 
by such men as Mr. Richmond and Dr. Muhlenberg, 
on the other side. The historic Church, daily services, 
frequent celebrations of the Holy Communion, beauty 
and order in the services of the Church, appealed to 
him; and he was at the same time eager to carry the 
Gospel to the poor, an ardent believer in free churches, 
full of faith in humanity, and imbued with the spirit 
of the age. The City Mission Society had been planned 
and organized to carry the Church to what we may 
call the lower middle classes. In the very year in which 
it passed out of existence, 1847, Mr. Peters and Mr. 
Richmond began to hold services in the city institutions 
and to visit the sick and needy in the hospitals and alms- 
houses. This was the commencement of the Mission 
to Public Institutions, which was somewhat more defin- 
itely organized in 1849, intended to reath the poorest 
and most neglected classes in the city, the strata still 
underlying those whom the City Mission had sought 
to serve. 

In the same year Mr. Peters started a mission at 
Seneca village, in what is now Central Park, on the 
site of the present upper reservoir; and by 1849 had or- 
ganized All Angels’ Church, of which a fuller history 
will be found elsewhere in this volume. The area 
now occupied by Central Park was at that time the 
most forlorn and miserable section of New York City. 
It is thus described by General Viele in his Memorial 
History of New York: 


It was for the most part a succession of stone quarries, 


A Refuge of Squatters — gl 


interspersed with pestiferous swamps. The entire ground 
was the refuge of about five thousand squatters, dwelling 
in rude huts of their own construction, and living off the 
refuse of the city which they daily conveyed in small carts, 
chiefly drawn by dogs, from the lower part of the city, 
through Fifth Avenue (then a dirt road, running over hills 
and hollows). This refuse they divided among themselves 
and a hundred thousand domestic animals and fowls, 
reserving the bones for the bone-boiling establishment 
situated within the area. Horses, cows, swine, goats, cats, 
geese and chickens swarmed everywhere, destroying what 
little verdure they found. Even the roots in the ground 
were exterminated until the rocks were laid bare, giving 
an air of utter desolation to the scene, made more repul- 
sive from the odors of the decaying organic matter which 
accumulated in the beds of the old water courses that 
ramified the surface in all directions, broadening out into 
reeking swamps wherever their channels were intercepted. 


The following extracts from a series of articles which 
Mr. Peters commenced to write at a later period, and of 
which only fragments remain, give a vivid picture of 
that region as he found it, its conditions and inhabit- 
ants, human and animal, at the middle of the last cen- 
tury, before the park was: 


No visitor to those beautiful pleasure grounds sees 
anything to indicate the condition of things there in the 
days when no Park was proposed. One would not hesitate 
even now to say that it must once have been a very rough 
territory and yet the rocky, swampy wilderness is faintly 
outlined in the Park as it is. Many a painful travail of 
thought passed its frequenters of those days when con- 
templating the feasibility of subduing its wilderness for the 
erection of lines of city dwellings; and the ruin it must bring 
to its unhappy owners by assessments for the levelling 
of rocky minarets and the draining and filling of its morasses. 


92 Annals of St. Michael’s 


It was a happy thought which said it is not fit for any- 
thing else but we can make of it a magnificent Park and we 
will. 

Population had long ago sent up its rays to the East and 
West of it and three or four houses of the ancient time 
stood on the edge of the Park region. East and West had 
little to do with each other, and consequently the roads 
connecting them were poor. Seventy-first Street was pass- 
able for riders or for light wagons, but its bald edges of rock 
afforded poor foothold for horses dragging heavy carriages. 
Eighty-sixth was open to the same objection at its Bloom- 
ingdale Road end. Jauncey’s Lane, coming out upon the 
Bloomingdale Road at about 92d Street, was a very good 
country road and the only one of the three lines of com- 
munication much used by carriages. From Jauncey’s to 
Harlem Lane there was no cross road. The old Albany 
Road, little used, cut off a strip on the 5th Avenue side of the 
Park from about goth St. up and passed down a steep hill 
full of loose stones at McGowan’s Pass, near the Mount St. 
Vincent restaurant. As to trees there were plenty of them 
in the northern part of the present Park, but as they were 
cut down by any marauder none were allowed to grow to 
any size. Hence it comes that, while there were many 
trees older than the Park, the only trees of full age are a 
few which remained standing in the grounds of the three or 
four old houses. 

Unattractive as the Park region then was, it was by no 
means unpeopled. From 76th St. to 108th St. there was a 
population considerable in numbers and of the most heter- 
ogeneous kind. White and black and Indian, American, 
German, and Irish; the believers and practicers in monog- 
amy and those who troubled themselves about no gamy at 
all; gentle folk deteriorated and rough lovers of a free and 
easy life; saints the most exalted and sinners the most 
abandoned, lived and multiplied and died. One large 
burying ground and three or four smaller ones received 


“Jake's End” 93 


the remains of the departed. Near the then upper reservoir 
were two churches, one attended by colored only,! another, 
a small Episcopal church, in which white and black and all 
intermediate shades worshipped harmoniously together. 


In another fragment, entitled “ Jake’s End,” he de- 
scribes the condition of one of the denizens of that 
general neighborhood: 


His house, or at least his last house during life, was 
wretched enough to pass among the most doleful of the 
squatters’ huts of that region. 

It was mostly underground, being entered by a descent 
of several steps from a door which faced (it would sound too 
cheerful to say the rising sun, so let it be) the eastern 
storm. There might have been a sheet or two of dirt, 
with glass on the outside of it, but to the best of my recol- 
lections the den was windowless and all the light came 
through the door, which I certainly never saw closed. The 
cabin had a mud floor, with a small platform of broken 
plank on one side. There was an open fireplace with one 
iron fire-dog; the fuel was of such bits of wood as could be 
picked up on the banks of the North River, whence it may 
be said, in passing, not a few of the pre-Parkites drew their 
supplies for cooking and warmth. In default of other com- 
bustibles the scanty platform was encroached upon, and as 
Jake gradually failed the only remnant of flooring faded 
away with him. A sadly crippled chair offered a treacher- 
ous seat for a single visitor; any more must remain stand- 
ing, unless they chose a suspicious resting place on the 
edge of Jake’s bed. This had been long years ago an im- 
posing timber structure, but was now far advanced in ruin. 
Jake occupied this ruin when first I made his acquaintance, 
and there he remained immovable to the end. Wretched 


1 This was a Methodist church; the Episcopal church here referred 
to is All Angels’. 


94 Annals of St. Michael’s 


as was this home Jake was not alone in it, but had a com- 
panion, Molly, with whom he lived in unblessed and childless 
union. Molly remained with him to the end, not from the 
depth of her affection but from entirely material reasons. 
One was that Jake kept under his pillow a purse of money 
laid up against a day more rainy than the rest of a stormy 
life and to leave, if might be, a small burial fund at its 
close. From this purse when he was asleep and she thirsty, 
Molly abstracted coins, which Jake missed and whose 
destination he knew, but how could he help himself ? 
Besides all this a kind neighbor was in the habit of bringing 
poor Jake daily a good hot breakfast and at times another 
meal, which Molly took from the weak and dying man to 
devour for her own sustenance. 


In another fragment he describes the dogs and the 
gruesome horse hunts conducted by them: 


By gift or unauthorized, or for the sake of refuge or 
wild life almost every existing species of dog had found 
its way there. Besides which all sorts of canines belong- 
ing to no known breed, from crossings and quarterings and 
unhappy mistakes, driven from more respectable quar- 
ters as too mongrel to be acknowledged, found hospitable 
shelter in its huts and shanties. Bound by no chain, they 
were free to rove and maraud by day and come home or 
stay out as they chose by night. With the perversity com- 
mon to flesh and blood, they were sure to be around the door 
step at early morn. 

Their life was divided between imperturbable laziness and 
tremendous excitement. Stretched out at repose under 
the sunny side of a shanty, nothing but a brick would stir 
them, and then feebly. Let, however, a distant bark from 
two contending dogs break the air and they rushed, bundles 
of nerves, from every quarter, furious and swift, like foemen 
hastening to their scene of action, and gathering around 
the strife like boys hemming in a walking match. The 


The Cholera 95 


contest over, they returned to their former immovable 
sloth. Every child was the happy owner of a dog, crippled 
or deformed as it might be. Many an unattached dog 
booked himself as holding general allegiance to any who 
for the time being would whistle him home. Making a visit 
one day to a man poor in dollars and rich in offspring, I 
counted seven sluggish dogs about his doorstep. ‘‘No 
wonder you are poor,” said I, “with all this pack to feed.” 
““O they don’t cost me nothing,” drawled the man, “they 
hunt for a living.” Not that they earned their food by 
tracking the deer or coursing the hare or pointing the 
woodcock: the hunting was a general marauding for that 
sustenance which they failed to receive from their owners or 
patrons. As they had made good progress backward towards 
a wild life, so had they correspondingly approached to a 
savage taste. Carrion, even down to decomposing pig, was 
good food and often easily gotten by unearthing some un- 
buried animal. The great hunts conducted in packs were 
directed towards the superannuated horses turned out on the 
Commons to die. The hovering crows made their repeated 
dashes at the eyes of the still living victims and cleaned out 
the sockets as their delicate morsel. The ground, furrowed 
by the pawings of the agonized horse, gave token of the night 
struggle with the hungry and pitiless dogs. No complete 
skeleton even marked the place where an equine life had gone 
out, but far and wide over wold and heath were scattered 
whitened bones from which the flesh had been torn and the 
sinews gnawed. 

Such was the dog and such the dog’s life before the Park 
was. 


In the same year in which All Angels’ Church was 
organized, 1849, the cholera again visited New York. 
It started in Five Points on May 14th. The public 
schools were turned into hospitals, and in them alone 
1021 persons are reported to have died. The total 


96 Annals of St. Michael’s 


mortality was reported as 5071. Among the victims 
was Mr. Richmond’s wife. With her death the bond 
which held him to settled parochial work was broken, 
and, early in 1851, he put himself at the service of the 
Board of Missions to go to the Pacific coast, and be- 
came the first missionary of our Church in Oregon. 
It seems to have been his intention to devote himself 
permanently to mission work, but at the outset, 
instead of resigning the cure of St. Michael’s, he asked 
for a leave of absence for one year, he to provide for 
the continuance of services during his absence at his 
own expense. Leave of absence was granted March 
19, 1851, and Rev. T. M. Peters, then rector of All 
Angels’ and assistant at St. Mary’s, was appointed 
to take his place during his absence. 

During Mr. Richmond’s absence in Oregon, Mr. 
Peters established St. Timothy’s Church. The origi- 
nal parish of St. Michael’s had been regarded by Mr. 
Richmond as extending northward to Spuyten Duyvil. 
To provide for the people in the upper part of this 
region he had established St. Ann’s Church at Fort 
Washington, where there was then a small settlement 
of poor people. In course of time these moved away, 
and about, or shortly after 1836, St. Ann’s Church, 
which owned no building of its own, passed out of exist- 
ence. By the middle of the next decade a small village, 
called Carmansville, had sprung up somewhat further 
south, in the neighborhood of 150th Street. Here, 
in 1847, a new church, the Church of the Intercession, 
was established, largely through the agency of members 
of St. Andrew’s Church, Harlem. This took the place 
of St. Ann’s Church in providing for the population of 
the upper end of the island, and by the creation of 
this parish the rectors of St. Michael’s Church felt 


Effort to Save Zion 97 


themselves relieved from the responsibility for further 
work north of Manhattanville. About and below 
59th Street, however, thanks to the northward spread 
of the city, a considerable population was springing 
up, for which no religious provision was made. To 
provide for this population, following in this the method 
pursued earlier by Mr. Richmond, Mr. Peters engaged 
the Rev. J. C. Tracy of Cleveland as his assistant 
at St. Michael’s Church, and assigned to him as his 
special work a mission in the neighborhood of soth 
Street, with a view to establishing there a separate 
congregation. Out of this grew St. Timothy’s Free 
Church, organized in 1853 and admitted to Convention 
in 1854. 

While Mr. Richmond was absent in Oregon, Zion 
Church in Mott Street, of which he had been rector, 
was advertised for sale. In the previous year ten 
lots of land had been given to this church on 
Madison Avenue and 38th Street, on which a brick 
chapel was erected and the services transferred 
thither from Mott Street. The church felt itself 
no longer able to continue what was practically a 
missionary work, and, regarding its property as intended 
for the benefit of its members and pewholders, and 
not for the Church at large, in October of 1852 ad- 
vertised for sale the land and building on Mott Street, 
to secure money to enable it to build on the new 
property on Madison Avenue. On somebody’s part 
it was a wicked abandonment of a great missionary 
opportunity, and so stirred up public feeling that a 
number of the clergy of New York joined in the follow- 
ing call for a meeting: 


Zion Church, Mott Street, New York, being offered 


Z 


98 Annals of St. Michael’s 


for sale: We the undersigned Rectors and Ministers of 
Churches in the Cities of New York and Brooklyn, believing 
that there is no portion of the city of New York where a 
church and the labors of a faithful ministry are so much 
needed, invite so many of the clergy and laity of these two 
cities as may take an interest in the matter, to meet 
on Friday, October 29th inst., at 12 o’clock noon, in the 
Sunday school room in the rear of St. John’s Chapel, New 
York, for the purpose of considering what measures can be 
taken to procure the present Zion Church edifice as a centre 
for missionary work in that part of the City. 


The last name signed to the call is that of T. M. 
Peters. He was also one of the speakers at the meeting 
resulting, and on his motion it was 


Resolved, That a committee be appointed in behalf of 
this meeting as follows: The Provisional Bishop-elect shall 
be Chairman, additional members shall be nominated by 
the chair. It shall be the duty of the Committee to take 
into consideration the subject before the meeting and report 
at an adjourned meeting of the Clergy and laity to be held 
in this place Friday, November 15th, at noon. 


The committee appointed consisted of Dr. Wain- 
wright, Chairman; Drs. Hawks, Haight, and Vinton, 
Rev. Mr. Peters and J. H. Swift, Esq. An appeal was 
made to Trinity Church for assistance, but the cor- 
poration was at that time engaged in the erection 
of Trinity Chapel, at an expense of $230,000, and 
had no money to spare. Other churches were con- 
cerned in the development of their own missionary 
work, and, after waiting for three months, the vestry 
of Zion Church sold the land and building to Arch- 
bishop Hughes for $30,000, and for a time the Church 
abandoned its missionary enterprise in the slums 


Attack on Trinity 99 


of New York. To some who were concerned in this 
effort to save Zion, it was a bitter experience, which 
aroused their indignation. Dr. Muhlenberg, Mr. 
Robert B. Minturn, and others made the failure of 
Trinity to render assistance on this occasion one of 
the counts in the indictment which they presented 
in the second attack on that corporation in the Legis- 
lature, in 1857-58. Trinity was using what was a 
trust for the whole Church, they said, to build so 
magnificent a chapel for a few rich pew-holders, that it 
could afford nothing for the many poor, to whom 
the money belonged as much as to the others. With 
some justice the friends of Trinity retorted that 
Trinity was not alone in such conduct, that St. George’s, 
St. Thomas’s and other churches, endowed from Trinity’s 
original grant, had sold their land and church property, 
and, abandoning their parishes and the poor still 
living there, had used the proceeds of such sale to 
build fine churches for their rich pewholders in a 
region more convenient to them. 

Mr. Richmond’s health proved unequal to the ex- 
posure of the life in Oregon. He fell ill and finally 
was compelled to resign from this mission and return 
to the East. He resumed his charge, as parish priest, 
at St. Michael’s early in 1853, resigning, however, 
the rectorship of St. Mary’s, of which Mr. Peters be- 
came rector. Later in the same year Mr. Peters 
was appointed assistant at St. Michael’s, and the 
three parishes of St. Michael, St. Mary, and All 
Angels, and the considerable missionary work now 
connected therewith continued to be administered 
practically as one concern. 

Mr. Peters had, during Mr. Richmond’s absence, 
bought, at his own risk, but with the knowledge and 


100 Annals of St. Michael’s 


approval of the individual members of the Vestry, 
seven acres of land in Astoria as a cemetery, and also 
advanced a considerable amount of money for the 
erection of All Angels’ Church. After Mr. Richmond’s 
return, the Vestry of St. Michael’s agreed to take over 
the cemetery in Astoria, known as St. Michael’s Church- 
yard, and also the title to All Angels’ Church, with 
the four lots belonging to it, repaying Mr. Peters 
what he had advanced for the purchase of these 
properties. The acquisition of the cemetery was a 
move of the utmost importance to St. Michael’s 
Church; the fuller details of the purchase and the later 
history of the cemetery are recorded in a later chapter. 

Another important move was made at the same 
time. At the Vestry meeting, held Tuesday, May 
1, 1853, it was voted to abolish pew-rents and make 
all sittings in St. Michael’s Church free; and it was 
also ordered that a collection should be taken every 
Sunday, contributing toward the expense of maintain- 
ing the services of the Church being thus made a 
formal act of worship. At the same meeting it was 
voted to spend $600 in repairing and painting the 
church. This work had scarcely been completed 
when, early on Sunday morning, October 16th, the 
church took fire, apparently from a defective flue, 
and burned to the ground. A hall for services was at 
once engaged, at the rate of $8 a month, in a factory 
which had recently been built in rooth Street (evidence, 
by the way, of the change then taking place in the 
character of the neighborhood), a melodeon and seats 
were bought for $200, and a committee, consisting 
of Dr. Williams, Messrs. Mali, von Post, and DePeyster, 
to which was later added Mr. David S. Jackson, was ap- 
pointed on the plan of a new church building. It is 


The Church Burns IOI 


rather curious to note that at the Vestry meeting at 
which this action was taken, November 12, 1853, “the 
rector reported the engagement from August 1st of 
Mrs. McIntosh as organist and her daughter to sing, 
for $250;”’ and that $33 was appropriated for a clerical 
gown for Mr. Babbitt, the late organist, a student in the 
the Theological Seminary, who was about to be ordained. 

The insurance received on the burned church amount- 
ed to $3450. It was decided to erect a new building 
at a cost of about $7250, or, with furnace, paint, 
furniture, etc., about $11,000. Moreover, as the 
original church site would be diminished by the opening 
of Tenth Avenue it was necessary to buy more land. 
A small gore of land north of the church, 15 ft. 5 in. 
front and 14 ft. 3 in. rear, running from Bloomingdale 
Road to Tenth Avenue, had already been purchased 
in 1851 for $245. In 1854 another small gore between 
ggth Street and the church property and between 
Broadway and Tenth Avenue was bought for $293.70; 
and finally in the same year, a couple of full lots to the 
north of the church property were secured through 
Gen. R. L. Schieffelin, at a cost of $3000. This com- 
pleted the church property as it continued to exist 
until the closing of Bloomingdale Road in 1868. These 
seemed necessary expenses with reference to the future, 
but involved the church in debt, which was con- 
siderably increased by the construction of the new 
building. This actually cost $12,611.70, of which 
$8100 was raised by a loan on the down-town property. 
The next year a new organ was added at a cost of $1200 
and a new heating apparatus at $225. The architect 
of the new church was Mr. Priest, the builder Mr. 
Twine, who was a carpenter as well as sexton of the 
church. The Building Committee, which succeeded 


102 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the original committee appointed to consider plans, 
consisted of Dr. A. V. Williams, and Messrs. David S. 
Jackson and Mr. H. W. T. Mali. The construction of 
the church, which was built of oak throughout, with a 
font of Caen stone, was overseen in every detail by Mr. 
Peters, who, later, when the congregation was about 
to move out of that church into the present edifice, 
mentioned this fact as one reason for his attachment 
to the old building. The new church stood westward 
of the site of the old, close to Bloomingdale Road and 
occupying almost the entire space westward to Tenth 
Avenue inits length. It was larger than the old build- 
ing, containing 73 pews and seating 400 people, while the 
other had only seated about 200. It was a churchly 
building, Gothic, with a clerestory, and a deep recessed 
chancel at the east end. At the southeastern corner 
stood a steeple-tower, in the ground floor of which 
was placed the organ. There was no gallery. The 
entrance was at the western end of the south side. 
Southward of the church, between it and g9th Street 
stood the churchyard, with its entrance on Blooming- 
dale Road. The whole effect was very attractive. 
The church was completed and consecrated by the 
new provisional bishop of the diocese, Rt. Rey. 
Horatio Potter, November 25, 1854. The destruction 
of the church building, coming as it did at a time of 
transition, had, naturally, a serious effect on the life 
of the parish. In his Convention report of 1855 Mr. 
Richmond says of this: 


During the time of rebuilding the church, the services 
were necessarily held in an inconvenient room and the con- 
gregation was much scattered. Many families formerly 
connected with the parish had also removed from the 
neighborhood, and their places have not been supplied with 


RT. REV. HORATIO POTTER, D.D.,D.C.L. 


Consecrator of Second Church, Nov. 25, 1854 


Mission to Public Institutions 103 


a class of persons that are as apt to attend our services, 
All the seats in this church are free. 


On Mr. Richmond’s return from Oregon, in 1853, 
he resumed his work in the Mission to Public Institu- 
tions with apparently renewed vigor. Early in the 
following year we find the first mention of this work 
in a communication to St. Michael’s Vestry, dated 
March 18th: 


The Rector informed the Vestry that during the past 
year he had appointed The Rev. Thomas McC. Peters 
his Assistant in the Parish, and to conduct a Mission to 
Public Institutions of the City, commenced in 1849.1 In- 
cluding the Rector & Assistant, five Clergymen had offi- 
ciated regularly, on Week Days or on Sundays, under this 
mission in eight of these Institutions; the salary of the 
Assistant is paid by the Rector, and the remaining ex- 
penses of the mission are provided by the Assistant from 
members of the Congregation & other sources. 


In Mr. Peters’s report to Convention, as rector of All 
Angels’ Church, in 1853, he gives the following details 
of this work as it existed at that time: 


Services in the public Institutions, as follows, are 
counted part of the same Missionary labor and their results 
recorded upon the parish register. 

Colored Home; twice a week public service & visiting 
in sick wards with occasional interruptions. 

Bellevue Hospital; once a week. 

Alms House, Blackwell’s Island; service, Sunday, with 
Communion monthly; also one visiting day in each week. 

N. Y. Orphan Asylum, with service once a week. 

Randall’s Island; service for between four and five hun- 
dred boys every Sunday morning. 

1Mr. Peters always gives the date of commencement of this mis- 
sion as 1847. 


104 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Penitentiary; service, one Sunday in each month, and 
once during each week. 

Lunatic Asylum, Blackwell’s Island; service once a week. 

The Rev. Wm. Richmond, Rev. G. L. Neide, & myself, 
give our labour to these services, the expense being in part 
paid out of the fund collected for the purpose. The Revs. 
A. Fitch, J. C. Tracy & C. S. Little, are also engaged; the 
first occasionally, the other two regularly, to carry on the 
work. 

For the necessary means I am indebted to the Rev. 
W. Richmond, the Pastoral Aid Society, & to individual 
members of St. Michael’s Church, & friends in the city, with 
the prospect this year of making up myself a pretty large 
deficiency. 


In the latter part of 1853 Mrs. Richmond! joined 
her husband in his mission to the penitentiary. He 
had found there many fallen women, who, he believed, 
might be touched and helped by female influence, but 
whom a man could not approach. Mrs. Richmond 
undertook the work among these women. Experience 
soon showed her that it was almost useless to work 
among them at the penitentiary unless she had also 
a place in the city to care after they were discharged for 
those who had seemed responsive to her efforts. Under 
ordinary circumstances, when their term expired they 
returned to the city They could find no employment, 
their old haunts invited them and they soon resumed 
the former life of sin. She set out to raise the 
money to provide a home for those who were willing 
to attempt a reformation. The details of this work 
are recorded in a later chapter. The House of Mercy, 
which she established, was located in St. Michael’s 
parish, and counted by Mr. Richmond as part of his 


1 Mr. Richmond had married again while in Oregon. 


Central Park 105 


parish work, which he reported regularly to the Conven- 
tion in his annual report from St. Michael’s Church. 
Reference has already been made to Central Park. 
This was the last great change which befell Blooming- 
dale during Mr. Richmond’s second rectorship. Who 
was the author of the wise scheme to turn the waste 
lands in the centre of the island into a city park is not 
certain. There are many different claims to this 
honor. The St. Michael’s tradition is that the scheme 
was first suggested by Dr. A. V. Williams, then warden 
of that church, when he was acting president of the 
Board of Aldermen. The condemnation of the land 
as far north as r1o4th Street was actually made in 
1856,! and from the Vestry records of that year we 
find that St. Michael’s Church was assessed $600. 
All Angels’ Church, which, as already stated, was then 
the property of St. Michael’s, stood within the territory 
condemned for the purpose of a park. The award 
for the condemnation of this property was $4010, 
which enabled St. Michael’s Church to recoup itself 
for the money advanced some years before, to purchase 
the building from the city for $250 and to remove it 
to land given for the purpose near 79th Street, still 
leaving a considerable margin over for the benefit of 
All Angels’ Church. The All Angels’ account was 
finally settled in 1858, the property held for that church 
by St. Michael’s being turned over to St. Michael’s 
Free Church Society, an organization incorporated 
for the purpose of acquiring and holding property for 
the support of free churches in the city of New York, 
with right of reversion to St. Michael’s Church, if it 
should ever be used for anything else but a free church. 


1 The remaining portion, to r1oth Street, was taken by the city 
in 1858. 


106 Annals of St. Michael’s 


At the same time All Angels’ Church was incorporated 
and from this date it ceased to be a dependency of 
St. Michael’s. 

It is interesting to note, in the Vestry records of 
1856, as indicating the changed conditions of the 
neighborhood, a vote to pay “$5 for bringing vestry- 
men to meetings in carriages.” It is also worthy of 
record that in 1858 we find the first bill for Christmas 
greens at St. Michael’s Church. 

Although after his return from Oregon Mr. Richmond 
had seemed to resume his work with his old time vigor, 
in reality he was already a sick man. His health was 
failing fast in those latter years and he was compelled 
to lay down one work after another. Even the daily 
prayers in the House of Mercy, which, as his last 
child, seemed to be especially the child of his love, 
became an occasional service, then ceased altogether. 
He administered the Communion in St. Michael’s 
Church for the last time on the first Sunday in June, 
1858. He died a little more than three months later, 
Sunday, September 19th. At a special meeting of the 
Vestry called September 25, 1858, the following resolu- 
tions were adopted and ordered spread on the minutes: 


Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call from 
his Earthly labors the Reverend Waulliam Richmond for 
nearly 38 years Rector of this Parish 

Resolved, That the Vestry of this Church while they bow 
with submission to the will of God in his afflictive dispen- 
sation, deplore the loss sustained by this Community by 
the family of the deceased and by this Congregation and 
lament for themselves the severance of ties of friendship 
and affection which have grown and strengthened through 
long years of faithful Pastoral care and social intercourse 

Resolved, That the Vestry of this Church reviewing 


Death of Mr. Richmond 107 


the Ministry of their lamented Pastor record with gratitude 
and affection their acknowledgment of the untiring 
zeal and fidelity, the abounding labor and Charity which 
have marked the long incumbency of the deceased. 


The Vestry also ordered that the expenses of the 
funeral should be paid by the church and that the 
salary of the rector should be continued and paid to 
his widow for the period of six months. In the follow- 
ing year they voted to erect over his grave a monument 
at a cost not to exceed $200. This monument, which 
stood for a long time near the door of the church which 
he had so long served as rector, was removed when the 
present building was erected, and placed in the crypt 
beneath the Chapel of the Angels. The grave itself, 
however, was not disturbed and Mr. Richmond’s 
remains rest beneath the present church. 


CHAPTER V 


Old Bloomingdale and its Passing; Being a Chapter of Interest to 
Antiquarians only. 


changing conditions in Bloomingdale, about and 
shortly after the middle of the last century, while 
the first chapter told of conditions at Bloomingdale in 
the first years of the nineteenth century, at the time 
of the founding of St. Michael’s Church. It is the pur- 
pose of this chapter to give, chiefly from the records of 
the church, some little sketch of the intervening period, 
the men and women who lived in old Bloomingdale, 
and the people and conditions that succeeded them. 
Those conditions which originally led to the develop- 
ment of Bloomingdale and other similar sections of 
Manhattan, namely the pestilential conditions of the 
city proper, continued to prevail for many years after 
the founding of St. Michael’s Church. In 1819 and again 
in 1822 the scourge of yellow fever was so serious that 
the lower part of the city was fenced or roped off. As 
a consequence more and more people sought country 
homes: those who were well-to-do, summer residences 
in such suburbs as Bloomingdale; and those who were 
less well-to-do, permanent residences in villages like 
Chelsea, Greenwich, or even Harlem. A comparison 
of the original list of pewholders with the lists of vestry- 


108 


|" the last chapter we gave some account of the 


Front View of House 


View of River from House 


THE WEYMAN PLACE 
From Old Paintings 


* 
¥ 


More Yellow Fever 109 


men of later date makes this manifest, so far as Bloom- 
ingdale is concerned. New names, representing new 
families, who had built or bought in Bloomingdale, 
continue to appear. 

William Weyman becomes a vestrymanin 1810. He 
had acquired a place on the river, at the foot of Van 
Horne, later Mott Lane, at 93d Street. Just south 
of the Weyman place, occupying five acres of land along 
the river, stood the country home of George McKay, 
who became vestryman in 1822. South of this, on the 
other side of Livingston or Waldo Lane, between goth 
and gist Streets, stood what was originally the Brock- 
-holst Livingston place. The Livingstons do not appear 
among the original founders or pewholders of St. 
Michael’s. Later the Livingston property passed into 
the hands of the Waldo family, and in 1834 Horace 
Waldo, then owner of that property, became a vestry- 
man of St. Michael’s. Just south of the Livingston 
place stood from the outset, as already narrated, the 
McVickar place. Below this, at the foot of 86th Street, 
the Howlands acquired a beautiful property, with a 
fine mansion, picturesquely situated on a high bluff 
overlooking the river, which afterwards became the 
House of Mercy and then the Ely School, and which 
has only recently been torn down. The owner of this 
property, William H. Howland, became a vestryman 
in 1837. In 1839 H. W. T. Mali, Belgian Consul, 
entered the Vestry. His place stood at 113th Street 
and the river. Directly opposite him lived Mr. Albert 
McNulty, in a house still standing and now used as a 
hotel. He was baptized as an adult in 1850 and en- 
tered the Vestry in the same year. In 1841 William 
Whitlock became a vestryman, and was succeeded by 
his son, William Whitlock, Jr., in 1854. The Whitlock 


110 Annals of St. Michael’s 


house, with seven acres of land, stood at 1ogth Street 
and the river. In 1843 James G. Stacey, whose home 
was on the old Kemble property, at about 104th Street 
and the river, became a vestryman. In the same year 
Richard L. Schieffelin, son of Jacob Schieffelin, one of 
the original founders, entered the Vestry. He had mar- 
ried in 1833 a granddaughter of Mr. McKay, through 
whom he became owner of the McKay country home on 
g2d Street and the river. 

In 1847 James Punnett was elected a vestryman of 
the church and became warden in 1867. He was a son- 
in-law of Caspar Meier, who immigrated to this coun- 
try from Bremen, Germany, toward the close of the 
eighteenth century, and founded the present firm of 
Oelrichs & Co. Caspar Meier’s country home stood at 
118th Street and the river. He himself was one of the 
founders of the Bloomingdale Reformed Church, but 
his children and grandchildren all became active mem- 
bers of St. Michael’s, and were among the most valua- 
ble assistants and fellow workers of the rectors of that 
church in their benevolent and missionary enterprises. 
For many years James Punnett occupied the old place 
at 118th Street and the North River. He was presi- 
dent of the Bank of America, and the Vestry meetings 
of St. Michael’s Church were held in those days in the 
board room of that bank, in Wall Street. Mr. Her- 
mann C. von Post, the present head of Oelrichs & Co., 
a grandson of Caspar Meier and son-in-law of William 
Whitlock, Jr., became a vestryman in 1852; and in 
1858 Gustav Schwab, a third member of the Meier 
family group, who had married Mr. von Post’s sister, 
Caspar Meier’s granddaughter, and who was also a 
member of the old firm, was elected to the Vestry. 

The men of this little group, consisting of Caspar 


Movement Toward Church Ill 


Meier’s descendants and kinsfolk, may be said to rep- 
resent a movement which was taking place in the com- 
munity toward the Church. While Caspar Meier, a 
German by origin, had connected himself with the Dutch 
Reformed Church, they were all active in the Episcopal 
Church. The same movement is represented by Ed- 
ward J. Swords, who became a vestryman in 1837. 
His wife, Jemima Striker (spelled Stryker in St. Mi- 
chael’s records), belonged to an old Dutch Reformed 
family, which gave its name to Striker’s Bay at 96th 
Street, on the shore of which stood the old homestead. 
Her father was active in the founding of the Blooming- 
dale Reformed Church. The son-in-law, a prominent 
Church publisher, was a vestryman of St. Michael’s 
Church, and four of their children were baptized there 
between 1837 and 1844. The Mott family, originally 
Quakers, belong in the same category. They first ap- 
pear on the records in the fifth decade of the century, 
1848, when Calvin H. Mott married Elizabeth Hewlet. 
In the next decade, 1859, Dr. Valentine Mott, per- 
haps the most prominent surgeon of New York in his 
day, became vestryman of the church. The Motts 
had purchased the old Garrit Van Horne house on 94th 
Street and Bloomingdale Road, witha considerable tract 
of land in that neighborhood, extending northward 
to Striker’s Bay. On the east side of Bloomingdale 
Road, at 94th Street, Dr. Mott erected a large house, 
which was occupied until quite a late date by his widow, 
and afterwards became the home of the Children’s 
Fold. The Livingstons are another case in point. 
Of Scotch descent and originally Presbyterians, they 
later became staunch Churchmen; and while they do not 
appear among the original founders, at a later date 
numerous burials, baptisms, and marriages of members 


112 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of this family are entered on the records. Perhaps Dr. 
David Tilden Brown, who became vestryman in 1860, 
having been, since 1852, the head of the Bloomingdale 
Lunatic Asylum, should be included in this group, inas- 
much as he came of a New England Congregational 
family. 

Dr. Brown and Dr. Mott belong distinctly to the 
period of the passing of old Bloomingdale, Dr. Mott 
representing also the property holders of a second 
generation, who bought the original country places, cut 
them up, and built new houses. To this class belongs, 
likewise, Mr. David S. Jackson, who first appears as a 
vestryman in 1850. He bought some acres of land to 
the west of Bloomingdale Road, from tooth Street 
northward (the old Vroom farm), and built there three 
houses, one of which, recently torn down, on trorst 
Street and Broadway, was for many years the residence 
of Rev. T. M. Peters and came to be regarded in the 
neighborhood as the “rectory.’”’ Some years earlier, 
in 1835, Mr. William P. Furniss, who entered the Vestry 
in 1856, bought from the estate of Mrs. Ann Rodgers, 
whose husband, William Rodgers, was one of the found- 
ers of the church, a considerable property north of 
Striker’s Bay (later, in 1856, he added to this part of 
Striker’s Bay farm), and erected there, in 1837, a large 
house, which still stands between ggth and trooth 
streets on Riverside Drive. The old Rodgers home- 
stead, as narrated elsewhere, became a hotel. 

The story of Elmwood will serve to illustrate one of 
the methods of the passing of old Bloomingdale houses. 
This house was situated on the present site of St. 
Agnes’s Chapel. It belonged at the close of the eigh- 
teenth century to a Mr. Apthorpe, after whom was 
called, also, the lane which ran along the northern edge 


TWO OLD MANSIONS 
x. Elmwood : the Apthorpe and Jauncey Homestead 


2. Burnham Hotel, formerly Baron Vandenheuvel’s Country Home 


cy 
, 
bm 
~ v 


Story of Elmwood 113 


of the property at 92d Street, forming a channel of 
communication with upper Yorkville. At some time 
before 1807 it passed into the hands of William Jauncey, 
one of the original founders of St. Michael’s Church. 
Later Jauncey’s daughter, Jane Mary, having married 
Herman Thorn, who became a vestryman in 1810, 
the Thorns took the house and continued to reside 
there until about 1830. It was a good place for chil- 
dren, and in the register of St. Michael’s Church is re- 
corded the baptism of seven children of Herman Thorn 
of Elmwood and Jane Mary Jauncey, his wife, between 
1811 and 1829. The place was next occupied by William 
G. Buckner and Emily Anna Bulow, his wife, two of 
whose children were baptized in St. Michael’s Church 
in 1835 and 1837 respectively. Mr. Buckner himself 
became a vestryman in 1838 and served in that capacity 
until 1841. This place was one of those disturbed by 
the erection of the aqueduct at about that time, and 
appears to have been abandoned as a residence on that 
account. A race track was now laid out here and train- 
ing stables built; for Bloomingdale Road, it should be 
said, was a favorite drive for the owners of fast horses, 
and the old house became a hotel. With the laying out 
of the Park, the development of Harlem Lane and the 
disuse of Bloomingdale Road for fast driving, the race 
course was turned into market gardens, and the old 
house and the grove about it became an excursion and 
picnic resort. Here were held at one time the annual 
excursions or picnics of St. Michael’s Sunday School. 
Gradually it became less and less reputable as an ex- 
cursion resort. The house fell into great disrepair, and 
the once beautiful grounds were cut to pieces by the 
opening of new streets, and with the construction of 
the elevated railroad Elmwood finally became a miser- 
8 


114 Annals of St. Michael’s 


able tenement, and then was torn down to make way 
for modern buildings. 

The families who occupied the old Bloomingdale 
homes intermarried freely, and the records of their 
marriages and of the baptisms of their children appear 
at least as often on the St. Michael’s register as on the 
registers of the down-town churches to which they also 
belonged. The Malis, Weymans, Staceys, Whitlocks, 
von Posts, Schwabs, and Punnetts were all connected 
with one another, and in general the details of their 
relationship can be traced from a study of St. Michael’s 
register. This group was very active in the affairs of 
St. Michael’s Church from about 1840 to 1860 and a 
little later. 

In the two decades immediately preceding, the De- 
Peysters played the principal rdle, there being at one 
time four members of that family, three of them brothers, 
on the Vestry of St. Michael’s. Reference was made in 
the first chapter to Captain Frederick DePeyster, one 
of the founders of the church, who was also vestryman 
from 1815 to 1816. His second son, Robert G. Liv- 
ingston DePeyster, succeeded his father on the Vestry 
in 1817. In the following year the eldest son, Captain 
James Ferguson DePeyster (Samuel Ferguson served 
on the Vestry with Frederick DePeyster), became treas- 
urer of the church, and so continued until his death 
in 1874, filling also the position of warden from 1830. 
He was prominent in the religious and benevolent life 
of the city, a governor of the New York Hospital and 
Bloomingdale Asylum, president of the New York 
Dispensary, treasurer and trustee of the Bleecker 
Street Savings Bank, vestryman of Trinity Church, 
and treasurer of the Society for the Promotion of 
Religion and Learning. He was the father of the late 


ae 


The DePeyster Family 115 


Frederick J. DePeyster. Frederick DePeyster, Jr., 
the third son, became a vestryman and also clerk of the 
Vestry in 1825, continuing to serve in that capacity 
until 1839, during a part of which time he was also a 
vestryman of St. Ann’s, Fort Washington, representing 
that church in Convention. He was president of the 
New York Historical Society and the Society Library 
and clerk of the Board of the Leake and Watts Asylum, 
which was directly opposite his father’s old home in 
Bloomingdale, and the register of St. Michael’s Church 
contains the records of his marriage in 1820 to Justina 
May Watts, whose father was one of the founders of 
that institution. By this marriage he became the 
father of the late General John Watts DePeyster. In 
1835 Frederick DePeyster’s fourth son, Abraham, 
who had been absent from the country for some years 
in Brazil, where he made a fortune, joined his three 
brothers on the Vestry. Like his elder brother, R. G. 
L. DePeyster, he died unmarried in his father’s house. 
His burial in the DePeyster vault.in St. Michael’s 
churchyard is recorded in 1836.!. In 1834, their dis- 


1In the DePeyster Book, prepared by General John Watts De- 
eyster, the date of Abraham’s death is given as 1830. According 
to the St. Michael’s records the proper date is 1836. These records 
also show that the Genealogy is in error with regard to the daughters 
of Frederick DePeyster by his second wife, Ann Beekman. (Accord- 
ing to the map of 1815 a John Beekman had a place just north of 
Caspar Meier’s, about 120th Street and the North River.) He had, 
by his first wife, Helen Hake, five sons, and by his second wife, Ann 
Beekman (daughter of Gerard Beekman and granddaughter of 
Pierre van Cortlandt), six daughters, not five, as recorded in the 
Genealogy: Cornelia Beekman, born 1803, married Richmond 
Whitmarsh of North Carolina and Rhode Island (the baptism of two 
of their children is recorded at St. Michael’s); Ann Frederica, born 
1805, buried in the DePeyster vault in St. Michael’s in 1840; 
Margaret, born 1806: Mary Elizabeth, born, 1808; Sarah Matilda 
Beekman, born 1813, whose sponsors were Philip Van Cortlandt of 


116 Annals of St. Michael’s 


tant cousin,! James DePeyster, was also added to the 
Vestry. He married Emily Maria Livingston, and the 
St. Michael’s register contains the record of the baptism 
at Cheviot Hill, Livingston, Columbia Co., June 25, 
1840, of their three children, Henry, Edgar and Beek- 
man. One more DePeyster family appears on the 
records,—that of Frederick Augustus or Augustus 
Frederick. (It is characteristic of the method of record- 
in those days that the same name appears under both 
forms.) Four of his children, Maria Roosevelt, Justina 
Watts, Jane Augusta, and Augustus, were baptized in 
St. Michael’s between 1818 and 1837. His second daugh- 
ter, born in the same year in which Frederick, Jr., 
married Justina Watts, was named after the latter; 
and besides the record of her baptism there appears also 
the record of her marriage, in 1837, at the house of her 
father, in Green Street, to Charles Fox Hovey of Bos- 
ton. We have noted this family at some length, 
because of the important part which it played in the 
parish up to about 1840, when the aqueduct was built 
and the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum located just 
across the lane from the Frederick DePeyster home- 
stead. After this the name disappears from the records, 


Westchester, Sarah Beekman of St. Croix, and the mother; Catherine 
Matilda, born 1818 (given in the DePeyster Genealogy as 1822), 
sponsored by Philip Van Cortlandt, Catherine C. Clarkson, and the 
parents, who married Benjamin Hazard Field. 


1 Frederick DePeyster was descended from the original Johannes 
DePeyster through his third son, Hon. de Heer Abraham, his seventh 
son, Hon. Abraham, and his third son, James Abraham, being him- 
self the eighth son of the latter. James was descended from the 
same original ancestor through a second Johannes; William, who 
married Margaret Roosevelt; Nicholas, who married Frances DeKay, 
and whose house stood at the one time terminus of the Blooming- 
dale Road, at 114th Street and Broadway; and James William, 
who married Anna DePeyster at Curacoa in 1775. 


aakqupow ‘f ‘aA “AA JO uolssassog ul Sunureg wor 
‘jeadsopy San] “IG Woserg JO 9115 UO 
SSNOH Y3SLSASadaG MOINASGsaYs 


Clarksons and Livingstons 1L7 


only James F. De Peyster retaining his connection with 
the parish as warden and treasurer until his death. 

As already stated, the old Bloomingdale families were 
much intermarried. Mr. Richmond was himself con- 
nected with a number of them through his marriage 
with the daughter of General Clarkson. James F. 
DePeyster, the treasurer of the church, married, as 
his second wife, another daughter of General Clarkson. 
Garrit Van Horne, one of the founders, married a sister 
of General Clarkson. Their daughter, Mary Johanna, 
married Adam Norrie, and the baptism of a daughter 
of the latter is recorded in the register. The vital his- 
tory of not a few families is thus recorded through 
three generations. Under date of October 4, 1827, 
there is a record of the marriage of David Augustus 
Clarkson and Margaret Livingston, daughter of Edward 
P. Livingston, at Clermont, in the presence of Robert 
L. Livingston of Clermont, John S. Livingston, Edward 
Livingston of New Orleans, James R. Roosevelt, Will- 
iam B. Astor and lady and many others. In 1836 Will- 
iam B. Clarkson married Adelaide Margaret, daughter 
of Robert L. Livingston, and the births and burials of 
their children and grandchildren appear in the records 
of St. Michael’s. Robert, son of Robert L. Livingston, 
married Frances A. Goodhue, daughter of Jonathan 
Goodhue, in 1836. Somewhat earlier Schuyler Living- 
ston married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas and Susan 
Barclay, who was buried in St. Michael’s in 1817. 
The church records show a continual interlacing of all 
these old families. In 1843 Dr. A. V. Williams married 
as his second wife (his first wife was a daughter of Wm. 
A. Davis, one of the founders), a sister of Mr. Richmond. 
The members of the church, including the rector, formed 
almost a family group. 


118 Annals of St. Michael’s 


The marriages and baptisms were often performed 
not in the church, but at private houses in the city, 
at country homes in Columbia County and elsewhere, 
or even in other churches, for the rector of St. Michael’s 
seems to have been regarded by many of these old fami- 
lies as their special rector and pastor, even more than 
the rector and pastor of the city church to which they 
belonged. 

Occasionally the records introduce us to persons 
or families who played an important part in civic life 
in New York or elsewhere. Some such have already 
been mentioned. To them may be added Judge 
Wendell, who was a vestryman from 1849 to 1850, 
and Hon. Gideon Lee, vestryman from 1829 to 1836, 
during part of which period he also held office in 
St. Mark’s and St. James’s Churches. He was the last 
mayor of New York elected under the old charter by the 
Common Council in 1833. In 1814 is recorded the mar- 
riage of Ralph Isaac Ingersoll of New Haven, later 
a prominent leader in the Democratic party in Connec- 
ticut, and father of Governor Charles Ingersoll, to 
Margaret Catherine Eleanora Vandenheuvel, daughter 
of Baron Vandenheuvel, the marriage taking place at 
the house of the latter, afterwards the Burnham Hotel, 
on 79th Street and Broadway. 

James Renwick, who became a vestryman in 1819, 
was a well known engineer and professor in Columbia. 
He married Margaret Ann, daughter of Henry Bre- 
voort, and two of their children were baptized at St. 
Michael’s, Henry Brevoort in 1817, and in 1818 James, 
the famous architect, who designed Grace Church and 
St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In 1849 is recorded the mar- 
riage of Fuiton Cutting to Ellen Justine Bayard, at the 
house of her father, Robert Bayard, in Irving Place. 


Rhinelanders and Wagstaffs 119 


In 1834 the poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck, stood witness at 
the baptism of Catherine DeKay and her mother, 
Janet Halleck, daughter of Joseph Rodman Drake, and 
wife of George C. DeKay; and it is noted that the water 
for this baptism was brought from the “river Jordan in 
India,’ by George C. DeKay. 

Originally, as stated before, St. Michael’s parish 
included the entire upper half, or rather much more 
than half of Manhattan Island, both east and west; 
and even after St. James’s parish came into existence 
some of the east siders continued their connection with 
St. Michael’s. This was true of the Rhinelanders. 
William Rhinelander was a vestryman from 1808 to 
1823 and his son, Frederick William, after him until 
1828. In the register of St. Michael’s Church there is 
recorded in the year 1815 the marriage of Mary Robart, 
daughter of William Rhinelander, to Robert James 
Renwick, and the baptism of two children by that mar- 
riage, William Rhinelander and Jane Jeffrey, in 1816 
and 1818 respectively. William Rhinelander himself 
was buried in St. Michael’s churchyard in 1825. Isaac 
Jones continued a vestryman of St. Michael’s until 
1822. A baptism of a member of the Rutter family of 
Yorkville, Harriette Jane, daughter of John and Agnes, 
is recorded as late as 1837. Of the Wagstaffs, another 
east side family, three generations are recorded in 
St. Michael’s Church from David and Sarah Ann, his 
wife (1769 to 1854), down through a second David 
and Sarah Ann, the granddaughter, baptized in 1820. 
It was, apparently, the possession of a vault in St. 
Michael’s which kept the Wagstaffs in touch with that 
church, where, however, they were baptized and mar- 
ried as well as buried. Another east side family, the 
Delafields, appear to have been connected with St. 


120 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Michael’s only by the possession of a vault there, in 
which four members of the family, a wife and three 
children of Dr. Edward Delafield, were buried between 
1834 and 1851. 

Several of the old Harlem families are also repre- 
sented by marriage and baptismal records in St. 
Michael’s register, and occasionally one appears as 
vestryman. Billop Benjamin Seaman married Hester 
Mary Cortwright in 1812 at the country seat of Edmund 
Seaman, Esq. Thirteen years later Edmund Cort- 
wright (this is at times spelled Kortright) married 
Sarah Alice Baretto, in the presence of Mrs. Living- 
ston, Gideon Lee, and others. In 1814 Guy Carleton 
Bailey (spelled in the records indifferently Bailey and 
Bayley) married Grace Roosevelt of “Haarlem.” He 
became a vestryman of St. Michael’s Churchin 1812; 
later we find him also in the vestry of St. Andrew’s 
Church, Harlem. Jacob Lorillard, who was elected 
warden in 1838, had land interests in both Harlem and 
Bloomingdale, but the former was his residence rather 
than the latter. He therefore declined the election to 
St. Michael’s Vestry, but accepted Harlem. 

Fort Washington and Carmansville people continued 
to be represented in the register of St. Michael’s Church 
until quite a late date. Four children of John Church 
Hamilton, son of General Alexander Hamilton, were 
baptized there between 1818 and 1831. In 1846 is 
recorded the baptism of a granddaughter of Audubon, 
the naturalist. There are also several notices of mar- 
riages and baptisms of members of the Bradhurst 
family, whose place was at about 153d Street, and what 
is now St. Nicholas Avenue. The latest of these is 
the marriage, in 1845, of Hickson W. Field, Jr., to 
Mary Elizabeth Bradhurst, with the baptism of Eliza- 


Old New York Merchants I2I 


beth Bradhurst Field in the following year, among 
whose sponsors were John Jay and his wife. There 
is also a record of the burial of Mrs. John M. Bradhurst 
in 1858. Hickson Field, Sr., was one of the great mer- 
chants of the day, engaged in the China trade and the 
wholesale drug trade. He retired from business in 
1838. 

Among the old New York merchants who do not ap- 
pear as founders or original pew-holders of St. Michael’s 
Church, but who settled in Bloomingdale at a slightly 
later date was John Clendining (also spelled Clenden- 
ing), formerly cf Pearl Street. He retired from busi- 
ness in 1811, bought a piece of land extending from 99th 
Street to ro5th Street and from 8th Avenue nearly to 
roth Avenue, and built a substantial brick house on 
ro4th Street in the very centre of what is now Colum- 
bus Avenue. Toward the middle of the century this 
house became the Marshall residence, and when 9th Ave- 
nue was opened it was moved bodily to the southwest 
corner of 104th Street and that Avenue. In the St. 
Michael’s register are recorded the death of Letitia, 
wife of John Clendining, in 1843, the marriage of two 
of his children, Letitia and Jane, and the baptism and 
burial, in the Hazzard vault in St. Michael’s church- 
yard, of a child of the former, three generations in all. 
Another of the great merchants of those days, whose 
name appears as vestryman from 1821 to 1825, was 
Isaac Lawrence of Pearl Street, who was also president 
of the Bank of the United States. 

Sometimes little glimpses of romance connect them- 
selves with the story told by the records. Jacob 
Schieffelin, one of the first founders, married a Quaker 
maiden, Lawrence by name. She, of course, was read 
out of meeting and became perforce a good Church- 


122 Annals of St. Michael’s 


woman. Her family remained staunch Quakers, and 
when Jacob Schieffelin gave the land for a church in 
Manhattanville his brothers-in-law instantly built a 
Quaker meeting-house by the side of it. Oliver H. Hicks, 
also one of the original founders, was himself a Quaker 
by origin. His uncle, Elias, was the founder of the Hick- 
site sect, but his father was orthodox. Oliver loved 
and married a Churchwoman, Julia Bush, and for 
love of her was read out of meeting and became a de- 
voted Churchman. On part of his country place St. 
Michael’s Church was built. The Royalist connection 
of many of the members of St. Michael’s during its first 
two decades has already been pointed out. To the 
number of those mentioned in the first chapter should 
be added Robert T. Kemble, one of the original trustees 
and the first treasurer of the church, who had been 
Commissary General of the British forces in New York 
during the Revolution. His wife was a Miss Cadwala- 
der of Philadelphia They owned a large tract of land 
on the river in the general neighborhood of 1o4th 
Street. Later he became seriously involved financially, 
and the original property passed into other hands and 
was cut up into smaller places. Guy Carleton Bailey, 
of Harlem, mentioned above, who was vestryman from 
1812 to 1815, and again from 1831 to 1834,! is another 
example of the old Royalist connection. He was named 
after Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, 
Governor of Canada, and later, in the last years of the 
Revolution, Clinton’s successor as Commander of all 
the Colonies. 

As already stated in the last chapter, it was the com- 
pletion of the Hudson River Railroad, about the middle 


1 Unless, indeed, the different dates represent two different men, 
father and son. 


Passing of Bloomingdale 123 


of the century, which was the final factor in the passing 
of old Bloomingdale. In a letter written by the Rev. 
Franklin Babbitt of Nyack, N. Y., who was organist 
from 1851 to 1853, while still a student in the Seminary, 
and to whom the Vestry of St. Michael’s in the latter 
year presented a black silk gown, “ which I have yet, and 
which was then considered necessary to wear when 
preaching,” gives some idea of the conditions at that 
period. He writes: 


The choir was composed of Miss Catharine Williams, 
Miss Elizabeth Williams, myself and three boys,—David 
S. Jackson, Delancey B. Williams and William Andariese, 
and we thought we made very good music. St. Michael’s 
was then in the hamlet of Bloomingdale—all country— 
more so than Nyack is now, and far away from the great 
city. I forget how I used to get there from the Seminary 
in 2oth Street, but remember once walking and finding it a 
long walk over a dusty country road. About that time the 
corner-stone of Trinity Chapel was laid, when the clergy 
robed in Mr. Owen’s house on 25th Street and the only one 
in the block between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. There 
was no Central Park then, and part of the land where the 
Park is now was occupied by Irish squatters. I was told, 
at the time, that the first suggestion of making it a park 
was by Dr. A. V. Williams, the one physician whom all 
Bloomingdale then employed and respected. When he 
made the suggestion, he was acting President of the New 
York Board of Aldermen. 


By the end of that decade the change may be said to 
have been accomplished. A few of the old timers still 
continued at that period and a little later to occupy 
their country homes along the river, like the Punnetts, 
Malis, Weymans, and Furnisses. Mr. Furniss was the 
last to maintain the old traditions. Until his death, 


124 Annals of St. Michael’s 


in 1872, he drove up with his family from his city home 
in Bond Street every May, to the house on rorst Street, 
living there until November. Some of the old houses 
were leased to new comers, and still maintained as resi- 
dences for a period. So General Sickles occupied the 
McKay-Schieffelin place and the Schwabs the Whitlock 
place. But in general each lessor was a descent in the 
scale from his prdeecessor. These houses were built 
originally for summer residences only; moreover, they 
had none of what are called modern conveniences, 
so that after a little, where inhabited, they came to be 
occupied by people of a very plain sort. A number of 
them were turned into hotels and one or two became 
the homes of institutions, like the Howland house, the 
Mott house, the Jackson house, and the old Jones man- 
sion, Woodlawn, at 107th Street and Broadway. Some 
fell into ruins and not a few burned down. The houses 
along the river continued to be occupied as residences 
to a much later date than those farther inland, to the 
east of the Bloomingdale Road. The large properties 
about the latter were early turned into market gardens 
and truck farms, as the city, pushing northward, drove 
out the truck farms of an earlier period and caused the 
demand for new territory for that industry. The crea- 
tion of Central Park drove a large part of the scavenger 
population domiciled there into the lands west of the 
Park, from 61st Street up to 87th Street or thereabouts, 
who soon created a new wilderness over the greater part 
of that region, such as they had earlier created in what 
is now the Park. 

Difficulty of communication with the city caused 
Bloomingdale, a name which had now come to be ap- 
plied to the region northward of 80th Street, to lag 
far behind other portions of the city which were in space 


Backwardness of Bloomingdale 125 


more remote. Hariem, on the east side of the city, grew 
rapidly along the line of the Harlem Railroad. Car- 
mansville and Manhattanville were both connected 
with the city by the Hudson River Railroad, but there 
was no passenger station of that road in Bloomingdale. 
Consequently Manhattanville and Carmansville both 
grew, while Bloomingdale remained stationary, and 
the country residences in the Carmansville neighbor- 
hood continued to be occupied long after those of 
Bloomingdale were deserted. Farther southward, also, 
as narrated in the last chapter, the village of Harsen- 
ville sprang up on the old Harsen farm, which had 
originally extended from 69th to 72d streets and from 
Central Park to the river. For many years the only 
regular method of communication between Blooming- 
dale and the city was by the old Bloomingdale stages, 
which in those days ran from 33d Street and 6th Avenue 
up to Manhattanville, connecting there with other 
stages which went on to High Bridge. By 1864 the 
8th Avenue horse-car line had been carried as far north 
as 84th Street and by 1867 it had reached Harlem. 
Along the streets which were cut through to 8th 
Avenue there grew up littie settlements, for the most 
part of very plain people. One of these existed at 110th 
Street, another at tooth Street. A settlement of a little 
better character sprang up at 104th and r1o5th streets. 
School No. 54 was built on what is now Amsterdam Ave- 
nue at about this period, and from there over to the 
river on one side and 8th Avenue on the other ex- 
tended a thin line of houses. Eighth Avenue, which 
ran at this point through a deep cut between high 
cliffs on either side, was reached from the houses on the 
bluff by a wooden staircase suspended from the side of 
the cliff, a perilous climb in wintry weather. 


126 Annals of St. Michael’s 


About the church itself there was also a small settle- 
ment. A tavern, now occupied as the rectory, stood 
opposite the church gate with a well and pump in front 
of it, which gave a supply of water to all that neighbor- 
hood. Next to this stood a blacksmith’s shop, within the 
limits of what are the present church grounds. About 
this time St. Michael’s ceased to be the only church of 
Bloomingdale. A Presbyterian church, now the Park 
Presbyterian Church at 86th Street and Amsterdam 
Avenue, was erected in a wood to the west of the 
Bloomingdale Road, at about 84th Street; and a few 
years later, in 1867, the Roman Catholics built a little 
wooden church of the Holy Name on the high rocks 
westward of what is now Amsterdam Avenue at about 
97th Street. 

Generally the population at this period and for many 
years afterwards, consisted of poor people, most of them 
very poor; but here and there, even at this period, some 
man of means would acquire property and build a hand- 
some residence. At about 75th Street Fernando Wood 
erected a handsome stone residence, with very large 
and well kept grounds extending down to the river. 
On the hill at g2d Street, overlooking the Park, Mr. 
Henry Heiser built a large house with stables and green- 
houses. Farther to the north, at ro5th Street, was the 
residence of Mr. William P. Dixon. He was a large 
landholder, who built many of the houses already men- 
tioned along 1r1roth Street and in the neighborhood of 
to4th Street. At that time and for many years after- 
wards there were still enough people driving to St. 
Michael’s Church each Sunday to make it resemble, 
with its gathering of horses and carriages, an old coun- 
try church. These were the so-called “ carriage people.” 
Besides these, Bloomingdale Road was frequented on 


Backwardness of Bloomingdale 127 


Sundays, especially Sunday afternoons, by another 
and a different class of drivers. It was the favorite 
Sunday driving course, and was dotted with road hotels, 
not a few of them once old summer residences. Some 
of these were notorious for their evil character, as road- 
houses on the outskirts of cities almost always are. 

This was the motley condition of St. Michael’s parish 
at about and shortly after the time of Mr. Richmond’s 
death. Old Bloomingdale had passed away and a con- 
dition of chaos had set in. 


CHAPTER VI 


Covers the Rectorship of Rev. Thomas McClure Peters, 1858-1893; 


and Tells the Story of the second Church, with a Sketch of the 
Manner in which Bloomingdale was swallowed up in the Great 
City. 


T the special meeting of the Vestry called to con- 
pe sider the death of Rev. Mr. Richmond, Septem- 
ber 25, 1858, Rev. Thomas McClure Peters was 
unanimously elected rector of the church. As he had 
already worked inthe parish as layman, deacon, and 
priest for seventeen years he was no stranger, either to its 
people or its ways, and indeed his new office was only a 
development of his former functions under a new name. 
His rectorship commenced, as has been set forth in the 
preceding chapter, at a period of change, when old 
Bloomingdale was giving place to chaos and market 
gardens. He had in the Vestry a valuable band of 
fellow workers; but outside of the Vestry there were 
almost no communicants and none upon whom he 
could rely for substantial support. 

Following the great panic of 1857 there was a religious 
revival in New York and throughout the country, and at 
first glance the vital statistics of the parish, compiled 
from the Convention Journals and parish register,! 
would seem to show that St. Michael’s felt the influence 
of this revival in an unusual degree. In 1856 Mr. Rich- 
mond had reported 55 communicants; in 1857 he 


1 See Appendix. 
128 


THE SECOND CHURCH 


About 1860 
Group in Foreground: Rev. T. M, Peters, and Sons, John and Andrew; in Gateway, Sexton,Wm. Twine 


Revival of 1857 129 


reports 113 communicants. There is, however, no 
corresponding increase in the number of confirmations, 
baptisms, etc., in that and the following year. In point 
of fact, as a study of the later records shows, the 113 
communicants were for the most part from the House 
of Mercy and the Alms House, and represent an increase 
in the number of inmates in the House of Mercy rather 
than any increase in the parish proper. This is clearly 
shown by the purged list of Mr. Peters’s first Conven- 
tion report in 1859. According to that report there 
were then but 20 communicants in St. Michael’s 
Church proper and 50 communicants in the Alms 
House. The communicants in the House of Mercy are 
not included inthis report. The next year 29 communi- 
cants are reported. After this the number begins to 
increase. It is the baptisms, however, which increase 
with the greatest rapidity. From 21 in 1859 they jump 
to 119 in 1863, the confirmations increasing from 8 in the 
former year to 33 in the latter. This was due not toa 
normal increase in the adult parishioners of St. Michael’s 
Church, but to an increase in the number of institutions, 
especially institutions for children, under the parochial 
charge of the rector of that church. So, in 1862, Mr. 
Peters reports to Convention that one half of the con- 
gregation of St. Michael’s Church comes from the neigh- 
boring institutions; and in 1863 out of 246 services 
reported as held 82 were held in the Bloomingdale 
Lunatic Asylum, House of Mercy, and Leake and Watts 
Orphan Asylum. 

The latter institution was non-sectarian, and the 
superintendent at this time, Mr. Guest, was himself a 
member of the Dutch Reformed Church. Lying within 
the parish, the institution was early included in the 


work of the Mission to Public Institutions, in 1852, 
9 


130 Annals of St. Michael’s 


and from that time on Mr. Peters used to hold there 
weekly services and instructions for the children, 
while on Sunday they attended the Dutch Reformed 
Church. Mr. Guest remarked that their interest in the 
week-day services held at the institution was much 
greater than their interest in the Sunday services at the 
Dutch Reformed Church, and after some observation 
and experimentation he concluded that this was due 
to the Episcopal liturgy, and that because of its liturgy 
the Episcopal Church was best adapted to children. 
So it happened that shortly after 1860 the children of 
the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum commenced to 
attend St. Michael’s Church and continued to do so for 
almost thirty years, until the institution was removed 
to Yonkers to make place for the Cathedral. Before 
they had attended St. Michael’s long the rector began 
to utilize them in the service. A surpliced choir of 
boys, one of the first in New York, was formed out of 
their number, and an equal number of girls, not vested, 
sat behind the boys in a screened part of the chancel, 
and supported them. They constituted the choir for 
many years; and as a resultof their service in the 
chancel of St. Michael’s, two of the boys entered the 
ministry of the Church, the late Rev. R. M. Hayden, 
who succeeded Mr. Guest as superintendent of the 
Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, and Rev. J. L. 
Prevost, Missionary in Alaska. After Mr. Guest’s 
death, in 1882, a memorial window was placed in the 
church by a number of the boys and girls who had 
marched down to that church under his lead on the 
Sundays of their childhood. 

During the last years of Mr. Richmond’s life increas- 
ing infirmities had interfered more and more with his 
work. The result was that as Mr. Peters, while assistant 


Mission Sunday School 131 


at St. Michael’s, was especially engaged at St. Mary’s 
and All Angels’, parochial activities reached a low ebb. 
According to the treasurer’s report, from April 1, 1858, 
to April 1, 1859, the collections on Sundays for the ex- 
penses of the church amounted only to $75.37; $29 had 
been received for burials, and $4510 for rent. The 
church was, therefore, almost entirely dependent for its 
support upon its endowment. Of the collections for 
the poor and for various charitable and diocesan pur- 
poses there is no record in that year. The following 
year the collections of the congregation amounted to 
$1080.90, of which $276.84 was for the poor and $105.84 
for the Sunday School, Mission to Public Institutions, 
and St. Michael’s Free Church Society. By 1861 the 
offerings had increased to $1398.25 and by 1864 to 
$2368.53, of which $796.92 were for the poor and other 
objects within the parish, and $1571.61 for the Mission 
to Public Institutions and other work outside of the 
parish. The new rector had evidently begun to can- 
vass and organize the parish. 

Mr. Peters felt strongly the necessity of educating the 
children of the neighborhood in religion and Church 
doctrine. In 1861 a committee of the Vestry was ap- 
pointed to consider the subject of erecting a building for 
Sunday School purposes, the Sunday School, such as it 
was, having been held up to that time in the church 
building. The same year the Rector reports to Conven- 
tion that a Mission Sunday School has been established 
half a mile away from the church and a room for Sunday 
School and lectures rented there; and at the vestry 
meeting of the following year the payment of $150 
rent for the same is approved and the rector authorized 
to continue the mission. This mission was conducted in: 
t1oth Street, where quite a large settlement of poor- 


132 Annals of St. Michael’s 


people had grown up, and besides the Sunday School on 
Sunday, the room was also utilized for lectures and 
debating clubs during the week. Three years later 
this work was transferred to a building erected by the 
rector on land belonging to him on Bloomingdale 
Road, a little to the north of the church. In this move- 
ment to provide better educational facilities for the 
Sunday School and a work room for the parish, 
the Rector of St. Michael’s Church was in line with the 
progressive movement of the day. In the earlier days 
Sunday Schools were held as a rule in the church 
galleries, the rector also at times gathering the child- 
ren about the chancel rail and catechizing them. A 
little later the basements of the churches were turned 
into Sunday School rooms. This was done at St. 
Mary’s while Mr. Peters was rector there. The next 
step was the erection of a separate building to accom- 
modate the Sunday School; and by 1860 the more 
progressive churches of the city were erecting such 
buildings. Out of these Sunday School buildings were 
later developed the more elaborate parish-houses of the 
present day. The mission Sunday School in r1oth 
Street with its missions and clubs during the week, 
and following this the special Sunday School building 
erected on Bloomingdale Road in 1864 and used during 
the week for lectures, debating societies, women’s 
missionary and industrial meetings and the like, were 
the beginning of institutional life in St. Michael’s 
Church and the seed of the later parish house. 

The removal of the Sunday School from the church 
represented, also, an increase in the ideas of churchli- 
ness and reverence. The Church of the Holy Commun- 
ion, consecrated in 1846, claims to have been the “first 
free church in this country; the first to establish early 


New Practices 133 


communions; the first to establish weekly celebrations; 
the first to sustain daily prayers; the first to divide the 
services; the first to establish a choir of men and boys; 
the first to have a Christmas tree for poor children; the 
first to adorn altar and font with flowers.’”! It was 
not the first free church, as will appear from a preceding 
chapter. Whether the other claims are literally true 
I do not know. Certainly Dr. Muhlenberg was one 
of the pioneers and prophets of the Church, and the 
Church of the Holy Communion has in any case a 
glorious record of work initiated and achieved. Mr. 
Peters was in close sympathy with Dr. Muhlenberg, 
and their views in many respects were so similar that 
it is not surprising that the record of St. Michael’s 
should in much resemble that of the Holy Communion. 
The early Communion, weekly celebrations, and daily 
prayer were established at St. Michael’s about, or not 
long after, 1862, when they were still counted as marks 
of an “advanced church.’”’ Christmas trees Mr. Peters 
had started while still at St. Mary’s, Manhattanville. 
In one regard Mr. Peters differed from Dr. Muhlen- 
berg. As already stated in a previous chapter he had 
been profoundly influenced during his seminary career 
by the Oxford High Church movement, and found 
himself in many things in sympathy with such men as 
the late Dr. Houghton, rector of the Church of the 
Transfiguration, whose ministrations in Bellevue Hos- 
pital also commended him to Mr. Peters. How highly 
the latter esteemed Dr. Houghton is shown by the fact 
that when the school established by him at Manhattan- 
ville was discontinued, he sent his sons and such 
others of the scholars in that school as he could influence 
to the similar parish school for pay pupils at the Church 


1 Centennial History of the Diocese of New York. 


134 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of the Transfiguration. Dr. Houghton was perhaps 
the first clergyman to establish in his church the daily 
Communion. This Mr. Peters never introduced, but 
he laid great stress on the sacramental life, and intro- 
duced eucharistic vestments, altar lights, and process- 
ional and altar crosses, at a time when these things 
were considered as rather doubtful and dangerous inno- 
vations. He was not a Ritualist, however, in the sense 
that he used ritual for its own sake. It was valuable 
in his estimation only in so far as it promoted greater 
reverence and intelligence in worship. He never in- 
troduced new practices merely because he liked them. 
He consulted the needs and desires of the worshippers 
in such a manner that whatever was introduced did 
not come to them as new and strange, requiring explana- 
tion and instruction, but as something which they had 
themselves desired and which corresponded to their 
needs and their intelligence. He was liberal and cath- 
olic, not rigid and sectarian; he did not undertake to 
make all worship in precisely the same manner, but 
endeavored to provide services differing in character, 
so that, as he wrote, all might have “the opportunity 
to worship at a time and in such a manner as they 
might elect.” The Church was not his; he was the serv- 
ant of the worshippers, whose duty it was to keep in 
touch with new movements in worship, as in everything 
else, and to mediate them to his people according to 
their needs. New as some of the things introduced at 
St. Michael’s were in their day they never aroused 
opposition or even serious criticism. They met the 
needs of the worshippers, and Churchmen of opposite 
parties, and even, during his ministry, when there were 
few churches of other denominations easily accessible, 
communicants of different churches, from Roman 


War Times 135 


Catholic, on the one side, to Methodist, on the other, 
might be found amicably kneeling together at the 
chancel rail to receive the Sacrament. 

Mr. Peters had not been rector many years when 
the war broke out. Party feeling ran high in the 
nation and made itself felt in the Church. There were 
all diversities of political creeds in St. Michael’s Church, 
from copperhead to abolitionist. Two of the mayors 
of that period, representing hostile factions, Fernando 
Wood and Daniel F. Tiemann, were at the same time 
parishioners of St. Michael’s. Mr. Peters was himself 
what was called a “ War Democrat,” loyal to the Gov- 
ernment, supporting its war measures, but out of sym- 
pathy with the abolitionists on one side and the extreme 
States’ rights Democrats on the other. Unable to go 
to the front himself, on account of his missionary and 
family obligations, he voluntarily provided a substitute. 
His house was also the centre of work for the soldiers 
in the field, and the present writer can well remember 
those meetings, with tables running the length of the 
great hall, and women around them cutting, sewing, 
rolling bandages; the thrill of excitement when some 
soldier appeared in uniform; the letters from soldier 
husbands, sons, and brothers that were passed from 
hand to hand; the anxious strained faces of some and 
the mourning weeds of others. In his report to the 
Convention of 1861 Mr. Peters mentions the fact that a 
German service for the benefit of a regiment encamped 
near by, recruiting and drilling, preparatory to being 
sent to the front, was held at eight o’clock each Sunday 
morning at St. Michael’s Church. And yet with all his 
patriotism, politics never seemed to enter the church 
building. Copperhead and abolitionist worshipped to- 
gether in peace and harmony, all party strife seemingly 


136 Annals of St. Michael’s 


laid aside at the doors of the sanctuary. Besides the 
attendance of the soldiers at the early service, and the 
occasional presence of a uniformed man in the congre- 
gation, the present writer can recall no other visible 
token of the war within the church until the death of 
Lincoln, when the little building was all draped in 
solemn black. In the Vestry records, however, there 
is curious evidence of the war, and of the need of 
income which led the Government to tax everything 
in sight, in the shape of a revenue stamp attached to the 
report of each meeting. 

New York suffered terribly in those days. One 
sixth of the able-bodied male population of the city 
is said to have been in the army or navy at one time, and 
the population fell from 813,699 in 1860 to 726,836 in 
1865. Bloomingdale suffered with the rest of the city, 
and in spite of the increase in baptisms and confirma- 
tions due to the institutions, the number of communi- 
cants and of families connected with the church remains 
for some time practically stationary. Financially, the 
Church seems on first consultation of the records not to 
have suffered. The increase of the collections, the 
mission Sunday School in rroth Street, and the erection 
of a Sunday School building near the church have been 
already noted. In 1863 Rev. J. D. Reid, teacher in 
the Manhattanville school, above referred to, was ap- 
pointed assistant minister ata salary of $250. In 1864 
gas was introduced into the church, and at the same 
time the rector’s salary was increased to $3500, on 
account of “the increased cost of living,” the sexton’s 
salary to $200, and the music appropriation to $500. 
But a further study of the records of later years shows 
that all was not so prosperous as these items suggest. 
The debt incurred at the time of the construction of 


Missionary Enterprises 137 


the second church remained unpaid and unreduced 
during this period, as did the debt on the cemetery. 

Strangely enough it was during these very war years 
that Mr. Peters laid, in close connection with his paro- 
chial work, the foundations of his great missionary 
and benevolent enterprises. After Mr. Richmond’s 
death, it fell to him to assist and advise Mrs. Richmond 
in her work for saving fallen and unfortunate women. 
In 1863 he took over the care of the House of Mercy, 
then located at 86th Street and the North River, put- 
ting the same under the charge of the “‘ Sisters.”’ This 
set Mrs. Richmond free to take, in consultation with 
the Rector of St. Michael’s, a further step, namely, to 
establish the Home for Homeless Women, into which 
might be received not merely those committed by the 
courts, but also such as were left without a lodging 
and needed shelter for a night or two. This was 
located at 304 Mulberry Street, close to Five Points, 
the very region in which Mr. Richmond had labored 
when rector of Zion Church. 

In the next year, at the suggestion of Mr. Peters, the 
Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society, which had 
died, and, as it was supposed, been buried, in 1847, was 
revived to take up the work of the Mission to Public 
Institutions, organized by Mr. Peters and Mr. Richmond, 
Mr. Peters becoming the chairman of the Executive 
Committee and practical head of the new society. The 
following year this society took over Mrs. Richmond’s 
Home for the Homeless, rechristening it St. Barnabas’s 
House, and set Mrs. Richmond free to take still another 
step in her rescue work for women, namely the estab- 
lishment of a home to care for husbandless mothers and 
fatherless children, saving the former from a life of 
shame and the latter from present misery and the pros- 


138 Annals of St. Michael’s 


pect of anearly death. To establish this she came back 
into the territorial limits of St. Michael’s parish, and 
with the advice and support of the rector of that parish, 
founded in the old colonial mansion of Nicholas Jones, 
then known as Woodlawn, at 106th and 107th streets 
and what is now Broadway, “The New York Infant 
Asylum.”’ 

Besides these institutions for women, in which Mr. 
Peters had collaborated with Mrs. Richmond, he him- 
self established, in 1864, the Sheltering Arms, to care 
for deserted children for whom there was no other 
institution. For this purpose, as narrated elsewhere, 
he gave up his own house, moving into the old Whitlock 
house at rroth Street and Bloomingdale Road. In his 
Convention address of 1865, Bishop Horatio Potter 
thus refers to this institution: 


On Thursday, the 6th day of Oct. 1864, I assisted at 
Bloomingdale, N. Y., at the opening of the institution of 
the “‘Sheltering Arms” for friendless, destitute children. 
In this case, a clergyman of the Diocese, the Rev. T. M. 
Peters, Rector of St. Michael’s, Bloomingdale, removed 
from a spacious dwelling having ample grounds, his private 
property, and dedicated the place to one of the most touch- 
ing and important charities ever established in this City. 
It is for children who may be worse than orphans through 
the misconduct of their parents. May the dwelling which 
he has so generously devoted to a sacred use be the happy 
home of the once wretched and neglected for long years 
to come, the birthplace of new thoughts and new affections, 
and the germ of a gracious instrumentality destined to 
grow and enlarge its means and its influence beyond all 
present hope. It is under the care of two of the “‘Sisters.”’ 


In 1865 St. Barnabas House was also placed in the 


A Sisterhood 139 


charge of the Sisters. They were as yet, however, only 
“Sisters’’ by courtesy. But now Dr. Peters (in 1865 
Trinity College bestowed upon him the degree of S. T. 
D.) took a new and very bold step forward, as narrated 
more fully elsewhere. Carrying out the earnest desire 
of the “Sisters’’ themselves he proposed to the Bishop 
the formal creation of a Sisterhood recognized by the 
Church, and suggested the reference of this proposition 
to a Committee of Advice. The result was the setting 
aside or ordination in St. Michael’s Church in 1865 by 
Bishop Horatio Potter of five Sisters, consecrated to a 
life of prayer and service. It was the first time such a 
service had been held in the English-speaking Protest- 
ant Church since the Reformation.!. The Bishop thus 
refers to this service in his Convention address of 1865: 


In my address to the last Convention it was mentioned 
that the internal care and management of the ‘‘ House of 
Mercy ’”’ were in the hands of several of those ‘‘ Sisters’ who 
were formerly in St. Luke’s Hospital. Three others have 
been added to their number, and they are now dividing 
their services between the ‘‘House of Mercy,” the ‘‘Shel- 
tering Arms,’ an institution opened a few days after the 
last Convention and designed for the care of children who 
are friendless and destitute, though not without parents, 
and “St. Barnabas’ House” in Mulberry Street, in this 
city, which is a house of reception in connection with the 
House of Mercy. As these Sisters desired to place them- 
selves immediately under Episcopal supervision, and as the 
subject was one of some delicacy as well as difficulty, I ap- 


1 Besides the work in the institutions the Sisters also acted at 
that time as district nurses. It is characteristic of the attitude 
of charitable workers in those days and the ignorance regarding 
germ diseases that Sister, afterwards Mother Harriet, came to the 
church for her ordination from the bedside of a smallpox patient, 
returning to her patient immediately after the ceremony. 


140 Annals of St. Michael’s 


pointed an able committee of Clergymen, and drew up for 
their consideration a number of questions touching the 
special employment of single women in works of piety and 
charity, and the organization of such persons into an 
association. They presented to me an elaborate and instruc- 
tive report; and having taken some time for consideration, 
I proceeded to receive and sanction the offering which these 
earnest Christian women so much desired to make in the 
especial and exclusive dedication of themselves under the 
guidance and sanction of the Church, to works of piety and 
charity. I need scarcely say that in the Association there 
are no irrevocable vows, no engagements which could inter- 
fere to prevent their return to ordinary positions in life, 
should any claim of duty from friends or relatives un- 
expectedly arise to require it. Inthe meantime, they have 
the aid and comfort of mutual society and counsel, they have 
a recognized and protected position, they have the strength 
and consolation that comes from feeling that they are wholly 
dedicated to a holy work, and they are so sequestered from 
trivial cares and interruptions that they can give themselves 
with tenfold efficiency to their labors of love. 


St. Michael’s was now the centre of a great institu- 
tional and missionary life, several of the vestrymen 
were trustees in the institutions above described, or 
active in the City Mission Work, and not a few of the 
women of the parish were also concerned in those 
works, while a large part of the attendants at the 
Church were members of various institutions. That 
“portion of the auditorium immediately under the spire 
is reserved for the Sisters and the children under their 
charge, who are attached to the Sheltering Arms, while 
the whole of the west end for some six rows of pews 
deep is devoted in the same manner to the inmates 
of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum.”! In a 

t Northender, 1867. 


A Children’s Church 141 


church whose capacity was 400, there were gathered 
every Sunday over 200 children from these two 
institutions. 

St. Michael’s was at this time pre-eminently a chil- 
dren’s church. Apparently continuing and developing 
something which he found already in existence, Dr. 
Peters made Whitsunday afternoon the occasion of a 
great annual children’s service in the church. Besides 
the children of the Sunday School, which was rapidly 
increasing in size, of the Leake and Watts and the 
Sheltering Arms, the children of the New York Orphan 
Asylum marched up to St. Michael’s on that day, crowd- 
ing the little church with children down to the doors. 
At those services the children presented their missionary 
offerings, the New York Asylum for the support of a 
child in India (Presbyterian mission), the Sheltering 
Arms for a boy in Africa, etc., and the speaker on those 
occasions was ordinarily not a clergyman of the Church. 
To this day the Whitsunday children’s festival is 
maintained, the children of the Sheltering Arms, the 
Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum, and the Darragh 
Home for cripples joining with the children of St. 
Michael’s Sunday School in that service. 

Dr. Peters dearly loved children, and understood 
them as only one can understand who also loves them. 
He knew every child in the institutions by name, and 
in the Sheltering Arms each year until the day of his 
death he named the dolls for all the little girls, never 
forgetting or repeating a name. Even children who did 
not know him would greet him, recognizing in him a 
comrade and a friend. In his later years, near Christ- 
mas time, one little child accosted him in the street as 
Santa Claus, and confided to him her holiday hopes 
and wishes. 


142 Annals of St. Michael’s 


In 1867 the Executive Committee of the City Mis- 
sionary Society proposed to Dr. Peters that he should 
assume the practical direction and management of that 
society at a salary of $3000, still continuing to act, how- 
ever, as rector of St. Michael’s Church. He laid the 
proposition before the Vestry, which at a meeting held 
December 7, 1867, by a vote of five to three, consented 
to his acceptance on condition that he should continue 
to conduct personally morning service at St. Michael’s 
and should provide a competent assistant at a salary 
of $2500, to be paid by himself. The reason why this 
plan was not carried through is recorded elsewhere. It 
certainly was to the advantage of St. Michael’s that 
it failed to become effective. 

In the same year Dr. Peters commenced a new mis- 
sion work in a settlement of ragpickers and scavengers 
which had grown up to the west of Central Park, from 
86th Street southward. The old residents of Central 
Park, the scavengers and ragpickers of a former period, 
were of mixed nationality, many of them negroes. At 
the opening of the Park this element disappeared and 
the new settlement consisted chiefly, if not altogether, 
of Germans. They were squatters, occupying little 
shanties on the rocks, their trade, so far as they had 
any, being to remove and dispose of ashes and garbage. 
A great quantity of the rubbish which they removed 
from shops and houses was piled up about their homes, 
so that the settlement was dotted with small mountains 
of ashes, fringed with tin cans and other rubbish. The 
houses were built largely of old boxes, thrown out as 
rubbish, and timbers salvaged from the river, on which 
were nailed tin cans beaten out flat. The settlement 
was intersected by a labyrinth of lanes into which it 
was dangerous for a stranger to venture alone, not so 


A Ragpicker Town 143 


much on account of the people as on account of the dogs. 
These latter, many of which served to draw the ash 
and garbage carts, were often large and fierce, and when 
not harnessed up or engaged in fighting with one another 
acted as watch-dogs to their precincts, combining to 
attack every strange thing, man, beast or inanimate 
which entered therein. There was no sanitary provision 
in this large settlement for soul or body. For some 
time Dr. Peters sought in vain a way of entrance into 
this strange and neglected community. Then, in 1867, 
an outbreak of typhus fever, of which many died, gave 
him the entrance which he sought. He was sent 
for to say a prayer over the dead body first of one and 
then another, and soon became acquainted with the 
people. High up on the rocks, on one of the narrow, 
crooked lanes that wound among the wretched but 
picturesque shanties, one old fellow had built a rough 
board house, in which he kept a school, receiving a few 
pennies from each child per week. Dr. Peters, looking 
for some place in which religious services might be held, 
had fixed on this as the only possibility for such a pur- 
pose For some time he could not secure it and then 
suddenly and unexpectedly it came into his possession. 
He was called to officiate at a German funeral. It 
proved to be the funeral of the old schoolmaster him- 
self and was held in the unsealed, unplastered school- 
house, with its refuse boards for seats. After the 
service had been said and before the procession had de- 
parted for St. Michael’s Cemetery, Dr. Peters comforted 
the widow, who was loudly bewailing her fate, thus left 
without support, by buying the house and contents for 
the sum which she asked. Here he at once com- 
menced a mission for the degraded and forsaken inhabi- 
tants of that settlement. The first public reference to 


144 Annals of St. Michael's 


this work appears in the City Mission Report of the 
same year, and by 1870 a small church and school 
building, Bethlehem Chapel, had been constructed. 

From this time on until 1886, Bethlehem Chapel 
was dependent partly upon the City Mission Society, 
partly upon St. Michael’s Church, and throughout all 
this period its records, of baptisms, marriages, etc., 
were entered in the register of St. Michael’s. From the 
outset of his work in the public institutions Dr. Peters 
had known how to utilize lay service, to the advantage 
of the laymen and laywomen rendering such service 
and the good of the work in which they served. So 
now, small and feeble as St. Michael’s was, he still 
found init men and women not only to man its own 
Sunday School, but also to conduct a Sunday School 
and industrial classes at Bethlehem Chapel, to visit 
there, and to contribute toward its support. 

Shortly after the commencement of the work at 
Bethlehem Chapel, another great change began in 
Bloomingdale. The Boulevard, as it was at first called, 
now Broadway, was laid out and the land condemned 
for its construction. From this time on for the next 
twelve or fifteen years Bloomingdale was in an almost 
indescribable condition of upheaval and destruction. 
Every few months a new street was opened. These 
ran as deep cuts through the hills and as huge cause- 
ways of loose rocks over the valleys. In between were 
either low bottom lands, utilized by some thrifty Ger- 
manasa market garden, or rocky hills on the top of 
which, accessible only by strange stairways, hanging 
perilously to the sides of precipices, little modern 
shanties stood side by side with old tumble-down 
mansions. The streets were unpaved, except for a 
line of slate slabs forming foot-paths on either side, 


auv’yT OJ UO asnoyy pur uirg piOQ Surmoys 
LASULS HLb6 JO HONOUHL ONILLNS :NOILLISNVYL JO GOlwad 


Street Building 145 


which, after a little, settled, forming deep slanting 
holes, varied by sharp ridges where the edges of two 
slabs came together. Never by any chance were sewers, 
water-pipes, and the like provided for in the first con- 
struction of the street. Again and again were these 
new-made roads torn apart for the addition of these 
various adjuncts of a modern city highway. To the 
onlooker it seemed as though the special purpose of 
this method of construction was to increase the expense 
to the city and the profit to the politicians and con- 
tractors who engineered and built the streets. During 
that time the aqueduct was removed! and the pipes 
laid under Tenth Avenue, which was consequently 
opened in fact as it long had been in law. This dis- 
turbed portions of the two old burying grounds of the 
church, and in 1872 it is reported to the Vestry that 
“six boxes of bones from the old church-yard at ggth 
Street and burying ground at 1o4th Street,” have 
been reinterred in Astoria. The whole region was 
afflicted during this period with sickness of a malarial 
character, supposed to be due to continual tearing up 
of the land. The Rector’s own family were obliged to 
leave Bloomingdale and seek health elsewhere, he 
only remaining at his post. Gradually order began to 
come out of this chaos. By 1880 the elevated railroad 
was running, and there were surface cars on Amster- 
dam Avenue. <A number of streets had assumed their 
final shape, and blocks of houses were beginning to 
spring up here and there. Bloomingdale had dis- 
appeared forever and a new city was beginning to arise, 
with its interminable rows of apartment houses. 


iFragments of it remained for years lying between blocks, some 
sections serving as mushroom farms, some as residences, and some 
as general nuisances. 


10 


146 Annals of St. Michael’s 


One of the results of the opening of the Boulevard: 
was the removal of the Sheltering Arms. To accommo- 
date the increased number of children which the insti- 
tution was called on to provide for, an annex, a large 
wooden structure intended to be of a temporary char- 
acter, had been added to the original building in 1866. 
Through this the new road passed. When the Shelter- 
ing Arms sought new quarters, on the land adjoining 
St. Mary’s Church, Manhattanville, originally acquired 
by Dr. Peters and Mr. Punnett for St. Michael’s Free 
Church Society, Dr. Peters bought this annexand moved 
it to the northwest corner of ggth Street and old Bloom- 
ingdale Road, where he had purchased three lots for the 
protection of the church property opposite. This build- 
ing he turned into Lyceum Hall, with lodge and club- 
rooms, as wellas his own study and office, on the upper 
floor, Sunday School rooms on the second floor, and liy- 
ing apartments for the sexton, janitor, etc., on the first 
floor. To this building the Sunday School and the vari- 
ous clubs and organizations of St. Michael’s Church were 
now transferred. It was a healthy and wholesome 
church life which found its centre in that building. 
In spite of the upheaval of the neighborhood the Church 
was steadily growing, from 79 communicants in 1864 to 
150 in 1869, 179 in 1874, and 298 in 1879; but it was still 
small enough to render it possible for all the members 
to know one another, for Dr. Peters seemed to know 
how to give every one in the congregation a part to per- 
form. The altar was decorated in those days by 
flowers which were raised by the parishioners in their 
own gardens and many had a little patch, consisting, it 
might be, of only two or three little plants, set aside 
especially as ‘“God’s Garden,” the flowers produced 
there being their tribute of beauty to God’s house. All 


Poor Relief 147 


the workers were organized into a guild, the different 
sections of which made reports at stated meetings of the 
whole, so that all shared in and were informed about 
the various works of the Church, both parochial and 
missionary. Every year there was a Sunday School 
excursion or picnic in which all took part, in the latter 
years always on the grounds of the Leake and Watts 
Orphan Asylum, and frequent gatherings of a more or 
less social character were held under the auspices of the 
Guild. Rev. C. T. Ward, who was assistant during a 
great part of this time, also conducted a singing school 
in Lyceum Hall, which was intended both to improve 
the congregational singing and also to serve as a social 
club for the young people of the neighborhood. Bloom- 
ingdale was still sufficiently cut off from the city at 
large to constitute an entity in itself; and the church 
still remained a country church inwardly as well as 
outwardly. 

Besides its normal parochial work and the institu- 
tional work described above, St. Michael’s was also, 
through its rector, during a considerable part of this 
period the almoner of the City for the entire upper 
west side. As in 1832 the City had made the then 
rector of St. Michael’s, Rev. Wm. Richmond, a health 
officer, with power to order and spend as he saw fit; so 
now it made the Rector of St. Michael’s the actual 
poor officer for the region from 59th Street to Kings- 
bridge, turning over to him the money to be distributed 
in out-of-door poor relief. He was the only person the 
city knew in the matter; but in carrying out the work 
entrusted to him he used to associate with himself as 
a committee, ex-Mayor Tiemann of Manhattanville and 
a Roman Catholic priest at Kingsbridge. Later when 
the Society for the Relief of the Poor districted the 


148 Annals of St. Michael’s 


city this region was left undistricted and turned over 
to St. Michael’s. Even while rector of St. Mary’s, in the 
hard times following the panic of 1857, Dr. Peters had 
given relief through work, by employing men to quarry 
and haul stones fora future St. Mary’s, and to macad- 
amize Lawrence Street, and men seeking employment 
used to report at the Rectory; so now it was not an 
unusual sight, especially in periods of distress, like 1873, 
to see one hundred laborers gather of a morning at 
Lyceum Hall to ask for employment on some of the 
work of street construction and the like in progress in 
Bloomingdale. 

In 1876 Dr. Peters became president of the House 
of Rest for Consumptives. This institution was at 
Tremont, but Dr. Peters contrived to bring it quite 
close to the church by appointing members of the parish 
to visit there, and engaging others to labor in providing 
clothing, papers, books, and the like for the inmates. 
Still closer to the life of the church came the Children’s 
Fold and the Shepherd’s Fold, of which he became presi- 
dent in 1877. A large number of children were in- 
stalled in the two houses behind Lyceum Hall, which 
still stand within the church close. The Mott house at 
94th Street, and later the Heiser house, at 92d Street 
and 8th Avenue, were utilized for another consider- 
able section of children. Smaller groups of children 
were placed in the houses of various trusty parish- 
ioners. The city paid so much for the care of each 
child, the institution undertaking for that sum their 
care and training, providing by outside subscriptions 
whatever additional sum was needed for this purpose. 
In the neighborhood of three hundred children were 
cared for in the immediate vicinity of St. Michael’s 
Church by these two institutions, and the whole parish, 


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Ringwood Mission 149 


from the richest to the poorest, took perforce an in- 
terest in the children in their care, sewing for them, 
teaching them in the Sunday School and in indus- 
trial classes, visiting them, providing Christmas 
festivals in winter and excursions and outings in the 
summer, many also finding their profit in boarding the 
little ones themselves, receiving at the same time an 
education in home making under the supervision and 
direction of the authorities of the institution. 

Besides this institutional work, Dr. Peters also under- 
took in these years a mission work in the mountain 
and lake country of northern New Jersey. Here the 
Cooper Hewitt interests owned large tracts of land with 
iron mines, Mr. Hewitt having his home at Ringwood, 
where Dr. Peters was a frequent guest. The people of 
that region were, when Mr. Hewitt first interested him- 
self in the mines, a half-savage population, living by 
fishing and hunting with a little cultivation of the soil; 
a mixed race, partly white, partly black, partly red, 
descended from the negro slaves who had worked the 
mines in the olden times and the Indian and white 
refugees who had drifted into the region. Mr. Hewitt 
undertook to civilize them by industry, education, and 
religion. For the latter he called on Dr. Peters for 
assistance. On his occasional visits to Ringwood Dr. 
Peters used to hold services in the school-houses which 
Mr. Hewitt built, and tramp through the mountains, 
visiting the people in their cabins, talking with them, 
instructing them in religion, and baptizing the children. 
Most of the inhabitants of middle age through that 
region to-day will tell you that they were baptized by 
him. In addition to this, regular services were held 
every Sunday in the school-house at Ringwood by one 
of Dr. Peters’s assistants, or by a lay-reader, who gener- 


150 Annals of St. Michael’s 


ally was a member of St. Michael’s parish. At one of 
Mr. Hewitt’s villages, Charlottesburg, near Newfound- 
land, in a beautifully picturesque valley in the Ramapo 
Hills, Dr. Peters, in conjunction with the superintend- 
ent of the works, commenced to build a small church, 
the money for which was collected from St. Michael’s 
congregation and personal friends. All this work 
was reported regularly at St. Michael’s Guild meetings, 
so that the whole parish was kept personally in touch 
with the mission. Ultimately the iron works at Char- 
lottesburg were abandoned and the village deserted. 
‘The houses stood untenanted in the lonely valley, and 
the place came to be known as the “ Deserted Village.” 
Here until within a very few years could be seen the 
foundations of the church laid by parishioners of St. 
Michael’s parish. As to the further history of the 
Ringwood mission—the Methodists began to build 
churches at intervals through the mountains, planting 
resident ministers in convenient centres. These men, 
who were on hand week-days and Sundays alike, were 
of the people, congenial to them. Finally, in 1892, 
Mr. Hewitt thought it best to withdraw his assistance 
from the Church mission and leave the work among the 
miners to the Methodists. Dr. Peters’s mission, how- 
ever, had not been fruitless in good results either for the 
mountaineers or for St. Michael’s parish which had 
assisted him. 

During these years the church itself had gradually 
been made more comfortable and much more beautiful. 
In 1867 a vestry room was added at an expense of $650; 
and in 1873 this was enlarged to meet the needs of a 
growing choir. In 1867 also the organ was repaired 
and at the same time moved from the tower on the 
south of the chancel, where it had been heretofore, to 


A New Communion Service 151 


the north side of the chancel. The tower thus freed 
was used to furnish much needed additional seats for 
children of the institutions. At the same time the 
church was carpeted at an expense of $350. In 1868 
the church began to acquire its own Communion silver, 
the flagon dating from that year. In 1872 the Rector, 
in his annual sermon, told the people that the chalice 
-and two patens, which had been used for the Commun- 
ion during the sixty-five years since the foundation of the 
church, belonged to Trinity. It was Queen Anne silver 
and Trinity asked for its return. In answer to his 
appeal a paten, chalice, and ciborium were purchased 
in that year. Two years later he suggested to the con- 
gregation that some of them had objects of silver or 
gold which had belonged to children or others now dead, 
which objects they did not like to use, and would not 
wish to have pass into the hands of others. These 
could be melted down to make an alms-basin, which 
would itself be a memento of the dear ones whose 
memory they cherished. The idea appealed to the 
congregation. Some of the gifts offered were very 
touching. For instance, the wife of a former warden 
put in the alms-basin some gold pieces which her hus- 
band had handed her for household purposes on the day 
he died, and which she had never been willing to spend. 
All these gifts which became thus the memorial of 
many departed ones, especially little children, were 
turned into the present alms-basin. The remainder 
of the Communion service was not procured until after 
1880, the last piece dating from 1887. 

On November 23, 1876, the Church Guild proposed 
to the Vestry to procure the painting and decoration of 
the church without expense to the latter, Messrs. Leo- 
pold Eidlitz & Son, the architects, offering their services 


152 Annals of St. Michael’s 


to design and oversee the work, and Messrs. D. F. 
Tiemann & Co. offering to furnish the paint, both being 
members of the congregation. The work was completed 
that winter and on April 14, 1877, thanks are returned 
to Messrs. Leopold Eidlitz & Son for planning and 
supervising the interior decoration of the church, which 
made it one of the most beautiful and attractive little 
churches in the city. A description of the proportions 
and architecture of the church contained in the North- 
ender of 1868 is recorded in the Vestry minutes at about 
that time: 


It is fifty feet front by seventy deep, and the height 
from the floor of the nave to the peak is forty two feet. At 
the East end is the Chancel, which is fifteen feet deep by 
twenty wide. It has ample accommodations for the Bishop 
and six clergymen, besides room for conducting the services. 
The spire starts from the south side of the Chancel, and rises 
to eighty feet in height, its apex being crowned with an 
iron cross weighing 700 pounds. Adjoining the north side 
of the Chancel is the Choir, which contains an excellent 
organ of approved modern construction. Still beyond this, 
in a small building erected for the purpose, is the sacristy. 
The Chancel is lighted by a superbly designed and finished 
transparent window, with grained transoms, and mullions, 
the latter forming interlaced arches at the top, the whole 
being glazed with exquisitely elegant tinted and richly 
ornamental stained glass, in which various devotional 
emblems are faithfully depicted. Indeed, the whole of the 
glass throughout the house is finished in like appropriate 
and tasteful manner. On the sides of the main building 
the windows are petite and lancet shaped, while in the 
clerestory they are rectangular. The roof is supported by 
columns and trusses, the latter artistically braced and 
ornamented. The whole interior is of oak, as are the 
furniture and fittings throughout, with the single exception 


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HOYNHO GNOOSS 4O YOIMSLNI 


Financial Position 153 


of the Baptismal Font, which is of CaenStone. The strict 
Gothic order of architecture is preserved, even in the most 
minute details of the interior and furniture. All of the floor- 
ing is neatly carpeted, most of the seats are comfortably 
cushioned; the ventilating and warming arrangements are 
excellent; the reflected light from the stained glass is 
most grateful to the eyes, and altogether this is among the 
most inviting Churches we have lately visited. 


During those years also the work of the church was 
more effectively manned and its financial position 
greatly improved. During the rectorship of Mr. Rich- 
mond from time to time assistants had been appointed 
to enable him to found a new church or to carry on the 
large outside work in which he was interested. In 1867 
begins the regular provision for an assistant for the 
Rector. In that year $200 was appropriated for that 
purpose, and from the report to the Convention we learn 
that Rev. A. H. Warner, later rector of the Church of 
the Beloved Disciple, was then appointed assistant— 
naturally at a much larger salary, the addition being 
provided by the Rector himself or from outside sources. 
The following year a larger sum, $500 was appropriated, 
and the Rev. C. T. Ward became assistant. And 
from that time on the Rector of St. Michael’s had at 
least the assistance of one clergyman in his work. In 
the same year, 1867, we find the Vestry considering the 
question of the sale of the down-town property, and the 
reinvestment of the proceeds in land uptown. It was 
decided, however, to follow the more conservative and 
less speculative method of retaining the down-town 
property and gradually buying in the houses built on 
those lots. The first house so purchased was that on the 
lot at 56 Vesey Street, in 1869; and after that, from 
time to time, as opportunity offered and the old leases 


154 Annals of St. Michael’s 


fell in, the buildings were bought, and the property 
leased on shorter terms of three or five years. 

In 1869, in his annual sermon, the Rector informed 
the congregation that the church owed a debt of $16,000, 
—$8oo0o0 of which had been incurred in the purchase of 
the cemetery at Astoria and the remainder in connec- 
tion with the erection of the church. Since the building 
of the church in 1854 the interest paid had been 
more than the original amount of the loan; and he 
urges the congregation to make an effort to remove the 
debt, which was not accomplished, however, until after 
1879. In 1871 a printing press was purchased, and 
some of the young people about the church gave their 
services for the printing of notices, programmes, etc. 
This voluntary work continued to be given for some 
time and proved very valuable in the administration 
of the parish. Little by little the church began to use 
printing in a more extensive manner, and finally in 
1880 the first year book, a report to the congregation 
and neighborhood of the work of the church, was issued. 
In the first issue of that annual periodical, which was 
very small and modest, much prominence is given to 
the collection then being made to complete the Com- 
munion service. 

The successive year books give a detailed history 
of the parish, showing the gradual organization of 
various institutions which are still effective. A young 
men’s association with twenty-nine members was 
organized in 1880, preparing the way for the chapter 
of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, which was estab- 
lished in 1887. In 1888 the Misses Eastman and Law- 
rance organized the Boys’ Guild, still in existence. 
About the same time appears the Twenty-Minute 
Society, out of which had grown by 1890, St. Agnes’s 


Deaths of Vestrymen 155 


Guild. This method of talking to the parish, reporting 
the work, and explaining the need of more work, 
proved so effective that by 1890 it seemed desirable 
to commence the publication of a parish paper, the 
St. Michael’s Messenger, which continues to this day. 
It has already been stated that when Dr. Peters 
became rector of St. Michael’s he was supported by 
an unusually strong body of vestrymen. Long before 
the changes which have been noted were completed, 
these had all passed away or left the parish. In 1859 
the Vestry records the death of their fellow member, 
Thomas A. Richmond. In 1862, appears a minute on 
the death of Dr. A. V. Williams “for thirty-three years 
member of this Vestry, twenty-seven years Junior 
Warden of St. Michael’s Church; and twenty-two 
years Clerk of the Vestry.” Not only is the customary 
reference made to his Christian character and his ser- 
vices to the church as such but also to his “ public 
life,” and the “ debt of gratitude’’ which the Vestry “as 
citizens’’ owe to him “for his unceasing activity in the 
cause of general education and mental advancement.”’ 
In 1865 is recorded the sudden death of Mr. Albert 
McNulty; in 1867 the death of H. W. T. Mali; 
and in 1870 the death of James Punnett. Of the 
latter the minute says that, “having learned from 
Christ ‘who’ was his neighbor, his unfailing liberality 
knew no bounds of race or creed. His charities, un- 
ostentatious, and yet too widely dispensed to be all 
concealed, have endeared his name to those among 
whom he has for years ceased to dwell and will long 
continue precious in the memories of the poor.”’ 
In 1874 appears a minute on the death of James F. 
DePeyster, vestryman and treasurer of the church 
since 1818, and warden since 1830, expressing the 


156 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Vestry’s deep sense of the obligations of St. Michael’s 
Church to its late treasurer, “to whose prudent and 
vigilant care of its finances the present prosperity of 
the church is largely due,” and noting also the evi- 
dences of “his increasing affection through the whole 
course of a long life, in the church of his younger days; 
an affection which the removal of his residence did not 
abate and which survived the departure from earth of 
all his early associates,” and the Vestry further directs 
that in memory of his long service to the church the 
lectern shall be draped in mourning for the space of 
thirty days. 

All these were men who had rendered services of es- 
pecial value to the church, and all of whom had also 
supported Dr. Peters in his various missionary enter- 
prises. Others of Dr. Peters’s most valued friends and 
supporters, like Mr. von Post and Mr. Schwab, had 
removed from the neighborhood and ceased their con- 
nection with St. Michael’s, although continuing to 
co-operate with Dr. Peters in his missionary and institu- 
tional enterprises. There follows a period when it was 
extremely difficult to find in the parish of St. Michael’s 
Vestry material, that is, religious men, actual members 
of the Church, who were also conversant with affairs 
and competent to be entrusted with the management 
of business interests. In 1873 Mr. W. R. Peters 
became acting treasurer and in 1874 treasurer, in 
succession to Mr. DePeyster. In 1877 Mr. E. L. Tie- 
mann became acting clerk and in the following year 
clerk of the Vestry, succeeding Dr. Brown. These 
two men turned their endeavors to improving the busi- 
ness side of the Vestry and of the church work. 
Heretofore as a rule there had been but one regular 
Vestry meeting a year, with an occasional special 


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Financial Development 157 


meeting as need arose. Now meetings become more 
frequent, and finally regular meetings are held each 
month except during the summer. The reports of 
committees become more systematic and the minutes 
of the Vestry begin to furnish an accurate and de- 
tailed account of the affairs of the church. Finally in 
1886 vestry by-laws are adopted and the whole organ- 
ization and method of action of the Vestry and its 
committees carefully systematized. The debt of the 
church, incurred at its construction, is paid off. They, 
with the rector, become also a committee on the 
cemetery, which they undertake to turn into a profit- 
able property financially. This requires much time 
and close attention, and the records of the Vestry 
show the results. In the next few years immense 
improvements of and additions to the cemetery are 
reported, of which a further account will be given in 
a separate chapter. Finally by 1890, the financial 
situation of St. Michael’s has become such that a paid 
assistant to the treasurer is required, and Mr. Tylee 
W. Parker is engaged at a salary of $50a month to 
collect the rents, oversee the repairs of buildings, and 
in general assist the treasurer in everything but keep- 
ing the books. 

Already in his annual sermon of 1872 Dr. Peters 
had called the attention of the congregation to the 
need of more liberal contributions. The total amount 
contributed for parochial purposes at that time was 
$1268.54; for the poor, $248.24; towards the support 
of various charitable purposes, $551.01; for missionary 
objects, $713.35. It appears that in that year con- 
tributions had fallen off over $800 from the preceding 
year and that the offerings for the poor, taken chiefly 
from the Communion alms, were altogether insuff- 


158 Annals of St. Michael’s 
cient to meet the “pressing necessities of our own 
communicants.’’ The offerings for charities in 
proportion to the means of the congregation were 
very good, and owing to the introduction of mission- 
ary boxes in the homes of the parishioners, the 
missionary offerings were also creditable; there had 
been an increase in the offering for the Sunday School 
but for the general support of the church work a 
falling off of $100 in the weekly envelope collection 
for current expenses is noted. Those offerings 
amounted all told to about $800, while the music, 
the sexton’s salary, and the cost of heating the 
church amounted to about $2000a year. The matter 
of increasing the receipts is taken up in repeated 
vestry meetings. Circulars are prepared and issued 
to members of the congregation and an effort is 
made to obtain from each individual in the congrega- 
tion a systematic contribution towards the support 
of the church. It must be confessed that the results 
of these appeals were not altogether satisfactory. 
Contributions were increased, it was true, and a 
larger number brought to contribute systematically 
towards the support of the work of the church, but 
the endowment still remains its principal source of 
maintenance. 

In 1883 Dr. Peters was given a leave of absence 
for ten months for his health, which he used in a trip 
around the world with his brother, E. D. Peters. 
His son, Rev. John P. Peters, was put in charge of 
the church during his father’s absence. At that time 
at least one-half of the baptisms, marriages, and 
burials performed at St. Michael’s were in German. 
There was a large German population of poor people 
in the neighborhood and no German church. In 


The Advent Mission 159 


addition, therefore, to the German services at Beth- 
lehem Chapel, Rev. John Peters preached once a 
month in German in the parish church. After his 
father’s return, in 1884, and his own removal to 
Philadelphia, he was appointed assistant for the pur- 
pose of continuing these German services in St. 
Michael’s and to preach once a month in English. 

It was during Dr. Peters’s absence that Bishop 
Horatio Potter becoming incapacitated by increas- 
ing infirmities, his nephew, Henry C. Potter, then 
rector of Grace Church, was elected Assistant Bishop 
of the Diocese. To emphasize his sense of the im- 
portance of missionary activities within the Diocese 
he commenced his Episcopal functions by officiating 
in the Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island. Then 
came the effort to stir up and revive the spiritual 
life of the Church in New York, culminating in the 
great Advent mission of 1885, in which St. Michael’s 
took part. Preparation for this mission was made 
for months in advance by a house to house visitation 
and by the careful training of choirs to sing in the 
daily services. The missioner at St. Michael’s was 
Rev. Dr. Van de Water, now rector of St. Andrew’s 
Church. What the result of the mission was in the 
Church at large the present writer cannot say, but, 
so far as St. Michael’s Church was concerned, it is 
difficult to determine from the record of vital statis- 
tics whether any very great impression was produced. 
At about that time the normal increase in communi- 
cants, confirmations, and the like had already become 
very large. 

Before this time the neighborhood had changed its 
character, and as a result great changes were taking 
place in the church. In the report to Convention 


160 Annals of St. Michael’s 


in 1880, reference is made to the fact that the congre- 
gation of Bethlehem Chapel is much broken up by the 
construction of wooden dwellings west of 8th Avenue. 
With the erection of the Elevated Railroad the squatter 
settlement, to serve which Bethlehem Chapel had 
been erected, began to be removed to make place for 
buildings of a new sort, the poor German population 
moving across the river to Gutenberg, or farther down- 
town to the neighborhood of 6oth Street and roth 
Avenue, but still continuing for many years to regard 
themselves as members of St. Michael’s and to appeal 
to its clergy for help and for the rites of the Church. A 
constantly diminishing mission work was continued at 
Bethlehem until about 1886, the clergy of St. Michael’s 
and some of the members of the parish giving their 
services to maintain that work as before. Then St. 
Matthew’s Church was organized to take the place of 
Bethlehem Chapel and minister to the new population 
which had moved in, and with the organization of that 
church the responsibility for that neighborhood which 
had rested upon St. Michael’s was felt to be removed. 
At the same time a new work was begun to the north- 
ward. A large population was moving in to the terri- 
tory north of Central Park and east of Morningside, a 
region which was not provided for by any other church. 
Accordingly, Rev. Montgomery H. Throop, Jr., was 
engaged as assistant for the special purpose of 
organizing a parish in that neighborhood, and, at 
the Rector’s request, a number of members of the 
congregation joined themselves with him as workers 
in what was at first called St. Michael’s Annex. Out 
of this work grew, by 1889, the Church of the Arch- 
angel, a brief sketch of the history of which is given 
elsewhere in this volume. 


An Annual Sermon 161 


But in spite of this continued hiving St. Michael’s 
had long ere this become inadequate for the accommo- 
dation of its increasing constituency. New houses and 
apartments were going up everywhere; services were 
multiplied but still there was no room in the church 
for those who desired to attend. Other churches of 
other denominations were springing up all around, and 
it was felt that St. Michael’s must do its part toward 
meeting the new conditions of its own immediate neigh- 
borhood. First of all, in 1886, it was proposed to en- 
large the church, and a committee was appointed for 
that purpose. It wassoon realized, however, that this 
would be useless, and that a new and vastly larger 
church must be built. On October 10, 1887, the Vestry 
decided to make application to the courts for leave to 
sell the land between 102d and 1osth streets, in the old 
school-house lot, and apply the proceeds to the payment 
of debt, the improvement of the cemetery, and the 
building of anew church. At first it was proposed to 
build the new church on part of the old school land, but 
careful consideration resulted in the determination to 
retain the present site, and on November 12, 1889, the 
committee on site was discharged. ‘The sale of the 
school land to procure funds for the new church began 
in that year, and in his annual sermon Dr. Peters 
set before his congregation the changed conditions 
of the parish and the necessity of a new church 
building: 

St. Michael’s as a rural parish, no longer exists. The 
beautiful suburb of Bloomingdale, with its villas lining the 
river and the winding shady road which gave access to them, 
remain only in the memory of those who once made part of 
that obliterated life. With here and there an exception 


the old-fashioned mansions are destroyed and their former 
II 


162 Annals of St. Michael’s 


residents sleep with their fathers in the tomb. Pastor and 
people lie in their long rest at our very door. 

The expanding city has invaded our quiei precincts, and 
an ever growing population fills the buildings which have 
crowded into the old gardens and devastated the sylvan 
shades. 

A reference to the parish register, dating from early in 
this century, sets before the eye the names of families of 
whom not a single member remains now connected with the 
parish. The inscriptions upon the tombstones in our 
churchyard recall familiar faces to very few of those who 
fill this house to-day. Two generations have passed away, 
leaving less than half a score to represent them in our wor- 
ship and councils. 

The full attendance of early years was succeeded by the 
smaller congregation which remained to us when rural 
Bloomingdale began to decay. A steady growth for twenty 
years from that lowest ebb, and a rapid one for the decade 
last past have filled these seats once more, but not with the 
descendants of those who laid the first foundations. The 
worshippers, like the neighborhood, are new. 

The first meeting-house-like place of worship disappeared 
thirty-five years ago in a sudden destruction, and this 
more churchly structure, with double the seating capacity, 
was built with reference more to coming than to immediate 
wants of the Parish. It was constructed of perishable ma- 
terial, because it was even then evident that when a genera- 
tion should have passed a larger building would be demanded 
by the inevitable growth of the city. 

Another change worthy of remark is in the manner of 
conducting the worship here and the greater frequency of 
services. One service on Sunday sufficed at the first. The 
church is opened for five separate congregations now. 
Her bell, which in early times rang out its summons on an 
occasional Holy Day or other week day has, for these past 
twenty-four years, called to daily prayer. 

The plain and simple service prevailing three-quarters 


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Changed Conditions 163 


of a century ago would be bald and unsatisfactory were 
we now to return to it. The chants were all read respon- 
sively and the singing of one psalm in metre and one from 
a collection of about fifty hymns, was the only customary 
music. 

These former things are passed away. The more complex 
and ornate life of the household has naturally brought 
improved taste into the house of God, and a higher culture 
has not been content unless its worship was in harmony 
with its home life. 

We may claim for our parish a good record in keeping 
well forward in the ranks of reverent progress in its appoint- 
ments and worship. 

St. Michael’s was, I believe, the very first church in the 
city to add a proper chancel! with the altar at its end preach- 
ing of the great sacrifice, and to banish the lumbering pulpit 
and reading desk which a century ago were deemed indis- 
pensable even in the smallest church. This was also one 
of the earliest congregations to introduce a boy choir, now 
so generally employed. 

At the same time the spirit which seeks sensation in 
bringing in always some new thing has been checked (if 
indeed it ever existed) by a proper conservatism. 

Whatever has been added, has been done with that 
reverence and devotion which bear in mind that the desire 
for God’s honor and glory, not man’s gratification should 
influence us in all that pertains to public worship. There 
is nothing here for which we cannot give the reason, and 
the object of every advance has been either to proclaim 
more distinctly the great truths of Christianity, or to bow 
down the pride of the human heart before the Lord and 
Author of life. 

Individually I am not fond of change for the mere sake 
of variety, and yet am ready to welcome a new which is 

1 The recess chancel seems to have been added to the first church 


in 1822, and presumably the other changes here referred to were 
made at the same time. 


Heme Annals of St. Michael’s 


better than the old, and may make our earthly service ap- 
proach more nearly to the sublime worship of heaven, as 
described in the Revelation of St. John. 

While thus, in many respects, the former things have 
passed away, we say thankfully that there is much which 
remains still as it ever has been. 

St. Michael’s, from its earliest day, has sought to give 
widely to others the blessings enjoyed at this centre and 
has become, in pursuance of this course, the mother of 
many children. : 

This past also will, perhaps, never return. The out- 
reaching of St. Michael’s, apart from charities and missions, 
must henceforth take the shape of home expansion. With 
the new chapel of Trinity Church at Ninety-second Street 
on the south, and the Cathedral at rroth Street on the 
northern portion of our district, the necessity of another 
church for our own people will hardly again arise within the 
curtailed bounds remaining to us. 

There confronts us now another task, which can perhaps 
be more fully impressed upon the members of the Parish 
after laying before you, according to a long prevailing 
custom, the statistics of a twelvemonth. 

The number of families now on our Parochial list is 509 
and the number of persons connected with the parish 1989. 

During the year 133 have been baptized, 60 confirmed, 
33 couples joined in matrimony and the funeral service 
has been said 107 times. 

We number now 560 communicants connected with the 
church, not including 22 in the House of Rest. 

In the course of the year 536 children have attended the 
Sunday School, not reckoning the children of the four 
Institutions connected with the parish. : 

We come now to our delayed subject, the new task which 
confronts us. We cannot longer postpone the building of 
the larger church, which was two years ago proposed as a 
pressing need. The house in which we now worship cannot 
so much as seat at one time all whose names are on the roll 


Need of New Church 165 


of communicants. We have sought by the five Sunday 
services to give opportunity to all to find room at some 
time of the Lord’s day in the Lord’s house. Not a little 
complaint has been made of want of accommodation at 
the chief service, which the larger number find it convenient 
to attend. 

A few strangers, owing to the uncertainty of securing a 
seat, have sought room elsewhere instead of casting in 
their lot with us. This difficulty will continue to increase, 
as houses with many apartments are rapidly added to those 
already existing. 

This fair fabric must also pass away that on its site a 
spacious and sufficient edifice may be built. 

We desire to erect here a church which shall be our 
proper offering to God, and which shall freely dispense the 
glad gospel with its sacraments to as many as can be brought 
within reach of the human voice. It should be a large 
building to answer its full purpose. It must be no mean 
structure, but rather the very best offering which grateful 
children can give their Heavenly Father, and ransomed 
subjects present to the King of kings and Lord of lords. 

Upon this work it is proposed soon to enter. It will try 
our faith and tax our liberality to build, and pay as we build 
it, such a church as all desire to see here. We must add 
also a proper and spacious Parish House to receive our 
large and ever-growing Sunday School and provide rooms 
for all parochial work. Let us lay the foundation broad. 
We shall not all live to see the purpose carried into full 
effect and the new church completed and furnished and 
adorned as becomes the place of worship of this old and 
ever-active parish. Let us enter on this task, nevertheless, 
with a will and a heart which shall so stimulate our efforts, 
that our commendation may be like that spoken by our 
Blessed Lord to the Mary who annointed His feet at Beth- 
any, ‘““She hath done what she could.” 

The old must pass away; let us mightily strive to make 
the new better. 


166 Annals of St. Michael’s 


From the report of the Committee on site, it appeared 
that the title to a half of the old Bloomingdale Road, 
closed in 1868, belonged to the church only in front of 
the original property deeded for the purposes of a 
church by Oliver H. Hicks and his wife in 1807. For 
the remainder of the property, which had been secured 
at a later date, the church had a clear title only to the 
western edge of the old Bloomingdale Road. It may 
be added that, owing to the contradictory, and, with 
all due respect to the constituted authorities, let us 
add the preposterous decisions of the New York courts 
with regard to this and other similar property, it was 
many years before a clear title was secured by any one 
for the property included in old Bloomingdale Road, 
and that property lay dead and unused, a slanting 
line of desolation through block after block, for many 
years, some of it almost up to the present time. How- 
ever, there was enough property to permit the erection 
of the church on the old site, if the churchyard with 
its graves and vaults were included in the church. 
This it was decided to do and a building committee 
was forthwithappointed, consisting of the Rector, Ward- 
ens Chamberlain and Peters and vestrymen Tiemann 
and Tripler, and steps taken to procure plans for a 
church and to proceed to the erection of the same. Mr. 
Frederick Draper was appointed consulting architect, 
and a scheme of competition for the plans of the church 
drawn up. On March 4th, the Vestry accepted the 
plans presented by Mr. R. W. Gibson and ordered 
that estimates be at once obtained on those plans. 

As is often the case the contractor’s estimates on 
the new church far exceeded those of the architect. 
The latter had estimated that it would cost $120,000, 
the lowest bids footed up to $150,000. The amount of 


Plans of New Church 167 


money on hand for the erection of the church was only 
$116,235.94, but the Building Committee felt confident 
that the remainder could be raised, and asked and 
received from the Vestry on July 17th authority to go 
ahead and build the church. The corner-stone of the 
new building was laid on St. Michael’s Day, September 
29, 1890. Subscriptions to the amount of $80,000 
were asked for and subscription books issued. On 
November 18th it is reported that $15,150 has been paid 
in and $10,000 promised in advance. 

The new church was to seat four times as many 
people as its predecessor, 1600 instead of 4oo. It 
covered the site of the old church and churchyard, and 
the western apse projected on to the part of old Bloom- 
ingdale Road abutting on the original property. The 
Chapel of the Angels and the vestry room also en- 
croached on the old road. The architecture was in 
general that combination of Romanesque and Byzantine 
which one meets in Italy. There was a grand campa- 
nile at the southeastern or street corner and the chancel 
was a Byzantine half dome, its walls pierced with a mag- 
nificent series of great windows. It was built of 
Indiana limestone, but for economy’s sake the wall of 
the western apse, which it was supposed would be hid- 
den within the block, was finished in brick. Within, 
the walls were left in plain plaster, with the idea, that 
“in course of time they should be decorated, and 
probably paneled up to a considerable height above the 
floor,” and similarly the windows were filled with plain 
Cathedral glass. There had been in the committee 
considerable discussion as to the advisability of seating 
by pews or by chairs, the rector being desirous that if 
possible chairs should be used, to do away as far as possi- 
ble with the whole pew-holding idea, but the final de- 


168 Annals of St. Michael’s 


cision had been in favor of pews, largely on the ground 
of expense. It had been planned to consecrate the 
church on St. Michael’s Day, 1891; but it was not 
ready. Another date was set, with the same result. 
Finally it was declared to be complete, and on the 
15th of December, 1891, it was consecrated by the 
Right Reverend Henry C. Potter, Bishop of New York, 
the late Bishop Seymour of Springfield, for many years 
the friend and at one time a co-worker of the rector, 
preaching the sermon. The final report of the Build- 
ing Committee, October 18, 1892, shows that the total 
cost of the church and appurtenances was $183,032.23, 
of which $44,548.80 was derived from donations from 
members of the congregation and outside friends, whose 
names are recorded in a Book of Remembrance, pre- 
served in the archives of the church. The daughters 
of a former Vestryman, Misses Sophia and Clementina 
Furniss and Mrs. Zimmerman, had presented the organ, 
which cost $12,000, and some of the guilds of the church, 
the Rector and members of his family had provided a 
chime of bells. 

Early in the following year, 1892, the old church, 
which had been moved back and which continued to be 
used for services during the construction of the new 
building was finally torn down. A beautiful little 
church it had been, contributing during the latter years 
a little touch of country quiet and homeliness amid the 
turmoil of the great city. Those who had worshipped 
there parted with it with deep regret. Dr. Peters ex- 
pressed their sentiments in the last annual sermon 
which he preached in the old building, October 11, 1891: 

For one, I leave it with regret. At every service, how- 


ever seemingly solitary, a crowd of witnesses is around me 
and when most alone I am in the fullest company of those 


& 
i 
| 


| 
laa secenenc ogee 


RT. REV. H. C. POTTER, D.D.,D.C.L. 
Consecrator of Third Church, Dec. 15, 1891 


New Burdens 169 


who once were here in body and now sing the eternal praise 
in the mansions of the departed. They never knew the 
house we are now preparing, and cannot be summoned 
thither. I speak to them a reluctant farewell upon the 
abandonment of this church, in which, for thirty-seven 
years of my ministry, I and they have worshipped. 

Abundant memories will, in due time, cluster around that 
larger and more enduring building into which we are soon 
to enter. You who may go there young will come back to 
it when you are old, and that in which you at first delight, 
because it is so new and fresh and beautiful in its wood and 
stone, will be dearer to you for its cherished human ties 
severed and yet immortal. 

It is some consolation to the older worshippers here to 
consider that we shall not, in hastening to enter the new 
church, altogether throw away the past. Buried genera- 
tions will sleep beneath our feet. Some memorials in the 
former house will serve a good and double purpose in the 
latter, useful still, and yet connecting us with souls gone 
before. Storied windows will bring back the dead among 
the living. Tablet and inscription and consecrated gifts 
will be tokens that we have come not to a birth but to a 
resurrection. That which was will be and that which is was. 


Although three score years and ten when the new 
church was consecrated, Dr. Peters took up the work 
of organizing the parish to meet its new conditions 
almost with the zest and vigor of youth. In the year 
the church was consecrated he was elected to the Stand- 
ing Committee of the Diocese and the following year 
he was chosen Archdeacon of New York. These new 
burdens also he took up with the cheerfulness and 
hopefulness of perpetual youth. In the year of the 
consecration of the church, his son, Rev. John P. Peters, 
had been called to be his assistant with right of suc- 
cession, and to him and the Rev. George S. Pratt, who 


170 Annals of St. Michael’s 


had become assistant in 1889, were assigned a consider- 
able portion of the preaching and parochial visitation, 
Dr. Peters reserving, however, enough of that work to 
occupy the time and strength of one ordinary man, 
besides his missionary and benevolent enterprises. 

With the construction of the new church, the parish 
entered in more ways than one upon a new phase of its 
existence. The Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum 
and the Shepherd’s and Children’s Fold, the children 
from which had so long attended St. Michael’s, were 
now removed to a distance from the city. The church 
had ceased to be an institutional home. As the city 
built up more and more about it, it was to be its obliga- 
tion to make itself the church home of the new neigh- 
borhood and to minister to the needs of a new popu- 
lation. To enable it to do so the Vestry had leased 
from Dr. Peters the two wooden buildings, Lyceum 
Hall, which faced on g9th Street, and the old tavern 
behind it, the present rectory, to serve for a temporary 
parish house. In October 1892, in an article contributed 
to the Mission News of the Archdeaconry, Dr. Peters 
thus describes the organization of the parish at that 
time: 

The young boys are in a Guild, with two divisions, each 
meeting one week-day afternoon. The older boys are 
St. Andrew’s Cadets, and have a room of their own. The 
young men form a chapter of St. Andrew’s Brotherhood, 
with two rooms which they have furnished and also fitted 
up with a library. The young men of St. Andrew’s are 
ushers in the church and also take up the night services as 
especially their own, besides distributing cards of invitation 
throughout the whole neighborhood. The little girls are in 
St. Faith’s Guild, meeting of a week-day afternoon during 
the autumn, winter and spring. A Sewing School for girls 
is held weekly on Saturday morning from November to 


An Institutional Church yal 


Easter. Forty-five young girls compose St. Agnes’s Guild, 
have a room of their own, and assist on the Altar Committee 
and in the afternoon Sunday-school. 

The next in order is the Girls’ Friendly Society, having 
a room of its own, and meeting in sections for work, exercise, 
or recreation every week-day evening. The Parish Aid 
Society, composed of young ladies of the congregation, col- 
lects for the furnishing of the church and fosters friendly 
relations among the young connected with the parish. 
Another association of ladies is formed to visit from house 
to house, attending to the spiritual welfare of those whom 
they thus reach. An Industrial Society meets one afternoon 
of each week from November to Easter, making garments 
for the poor and for public institutions, and during Lent, 
in connection with the Woman’s Missionary Society, filling 
a box for the family of some clergyman with insufficient 
salary. The Altar Guild is composed of ladies who take 
charge of the altars, with their decorations, and everything 
connected with the chancel of both the church and the 
Chapel of the Angels. St. Cecilia’s Guild, composed of 
42 members, replaces the regular choir at the fifth service 
on Sunday evening. It is composed of men and women, is 
vested, and aims successfully to sing with, and not for the 
congregation. St. Michael’s Branch of the Church Periodical 
Club, with 11 members and 26 contributors, distributed last 
year about 2000 periodicals and papers. The Woman’s 
Missionary Society, of general membership, holds regular 
meetings in one of the parish houses and collects for mission 
work under the General Missionary Society. 

There is besides in the parish buildings St. Michael’s 
Station of the Penny Provident Fund, counting in the year 
closing August 31st, 200 depositors. 

A clinic, for free consultation by the poor, is held in a 
room provided for the purpose by the vestry, and is at- 
tended in the afternoon of each week day by physicians 
of the West Side, who freely give their time and attention 
to these charitable labors. 


172 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Dr. Peters had not expected, when he entered the new 
building, that it would be given him to work there 
many years. He had often said to his son that it would 
fall on him to beautify the church, to build the parish 
house for which he had planned, and to develop the 
parish along the new lines which the new conditions 
required. 

It was vouchsafed to him to celebrate one interesting 
festival in the new church, the Jubilee of the commence- 
ment of his official relation to St. Michael’s Church. 
While he had really commenced his work, at St. 
Mary’s, in 1841 it was not until 1842 that he was offi- 
cially appointed a lay reader. To commemorate this 
event the congregation placed in the church in Decem- 
ber of 1892 a marble font the inscription on which 
records its occasion. In the same year one of the 
vestrymen on whom Dr. Peters had depended in the 
years of transition and who, with his family, had ren- 
dered valuable assistance in the parochial and mis- 
sionary work of the church, Charles H. Kitchnel, 
passed away. 

Dr. Peters started out on a Saturday in August, 1893, 
in a characteristic manner; going first to visit the in- 
stitutions at Elmsford, and proceeding thence to the 
house of a friend in Peekskill, to hold services on the 
following day at a little country mission, in which the 
latter was interested and which Dr. Peters was in the 
habit of visiting each year. The next morning, August 
1 3th, a few minutes before eleven, as the congregation of 
St. Michael’s was assembling for service, came the mes- 
sage that Dr. Peters had passed away during the night. 

They laid his body in St. Michael’s Cemetery, which 
he had created, and on his tombstone were inscribed 
these words: 


Philanthropic Work 173 


Friend of the friendless, his life was devoted to the care 
of the needy. He founded many churches and benevolent 
institutions, also this cemetery. 

Come ye Blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you. I was hungry and ye gave me meat; 
I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye 
took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was in prison and 
ye came unto me, 


The following minute was spread on the records of 
the Vestry of St. Michael’s Church: 


Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God in His wise 
providence to take out of this world the soul of His Faith- 
ful servant, the Reverend Thomas McClure Peters, Doctor 
of Sacred Theology, Archdeacon of New York: for thirty- 
five years Rector of St. Michael’s Church and ministering 
therein for more than fifty years, the Wardens and Vestry- 
men of St. Michael’s Church desire to place upon the records 
of the Vestry this minute to his memory. 

Dr. Peters in the several capacities of Lay Reader, As- 
sistant Minister and Rector, served St. Michael’s Church for 
more than half a century; and the history of the growth 
and progress of the parish for more than half of its existence 
is the record of his life and labors. 

He came to it when St. Michael’s was a little country 
church—the outpost of the Church in this city and deriving 
its chief prominence from that fact. 

It was his good fortune to begin his ministerial career 
under the guidance of one largely endowed with the true 
missionary spirit and under whom the spiritual foundations 
of the parish were laid broad and deep—the Rev. William 
Richmond, then the Rector, and when Mr. Richmond was 
called to his reward, St. Michael’s found in Dr. Peters a 
worthy successor. 

He brought to his work a vigor and enthusiasm which 
knew no exhaustion or abatement to the end. Under Dr. 


174 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Peters’ wise and tireless care, every line of parochial and 
missionary work which his pious predecessor had planned 
was developed and steadily and successfully carried on, and 
as occasion offered, new work was planned and under- 
taken, until St. Michaei’s has become the representative 
free church of the diocese, if not of the American Church— 
and is recognized to-day as one of the leading churches 
of the metropolis—the mother Church of the upper part of 
the city. 

The Reverend Dr. Peters was the acknowledged leader 
in the missionary and charitable work of the Church in 
the Diocese of New York and his pre-eminence as a philan- 
thropist was recognized without the Church as well as 
within her borders. 

He had the confidence of the whole community without 
regard to creed or condition, and it was long since a well- 
understood thing that no work for the succoring of the 
souls or bodies of men to which he gave the sanction 
of his name would fail for lack of sufficient pecuniary 
support. 

Dr. Peters was gifted with a mind of singular clearness 
and practical ability and penetrated with so deep a sense 
of personal responsibility that no duty undertaken by him 
was ever performed perfunctorily or by proxy. 

The Sheltering Arms, the Children’s Fold, the City Mis- 
sion Society, the House of Rest for Consumptives, and other 
kindred institutions owe their existence and present pros- 
perous condition under God, mainly to his fostering care and 
devoted labors, and are in themselves monuments to his 
memory. While it is by works such as those just enu- 
merated that Dr. Peters is probably most widely known, 
they by no means represent the sum of his activities in the 
service of the Church and for the good of men: he was a 
trustee of the estates and property of the Church in the 
Diocese of New York, a manager of the Society for the 
Promotion of Religion and Learning, of the New York 


. Philanthropic Work 175 


Hospital Association and of many other societies and 
boards having in charge the missions and charities of 
the Church, and in not one of them was he ever a mere 
place-holder. 

He was also at the time of his death a member of the 
Standing Committee of the Diocese and Archdeacon of 
New York. 

He was one of the first to perceive the advantages, if 
not the necessity, of dividing the great Diocese of New 
York, adhering to the project in the face of strong oppo- 
sition, with the tenacity which characterized him in every 
movement of the wisdom of which he was convinced. He 
was one of those to whom the Church is most largely 
indebted for the erection of the large and prosperous 
Dioceses of Albany and Long Island. 

Few men in any calling have filled so many and im- 
portant offices of trust and it will be difficult to name one 
who has filled them with such faithfulness, ability and 
success. 

We have enumerated several of the offices filled by our 
departed Rector for the reason that no minute of him 
would be at all accurate which omitted to take note of 
them, and that through his holding them, St. Michael’s 
Church has been honored—but it is as Rector of the church 
and Pastor of his people that we desire and love especially 
to remember Dr. Peters. 

In all his varied activities to the very close of his mortal 
life among us, no one duty to his church or parishioners 
was neglected. He was the faithful parish priest, jealous 
of his Master’s service and honor, delighting in the daily 
round of prayer and praise; reverent in all the functions 
of his office and especially in the celebration of the Holy 
Communion. Singularly modest and simple in his manner 
and bearing, he was to all his people the true friend and 
wise counsellor, ever ready to give his best aid in all 
trials, spiritual or temporal. 


176 Annals of St. Michael’s 


He has left a fragrant memory and a record which will 
endure as one of the chiefest treasures of St. Michael’s 
Church, an incentive and example for all who in the times 
to come shall minister in this church. 

Grant to him, Lord, eternal rest, and let light perpetual 
shine upon him. 


THE THIRD CHURCH 
Consecrated. Dec. 15, 1891 


CHAPTER VII 


The Third Church; Telling the Story of the Present Rectorate, 
with Some Account of the Decoration of the Church, the Building of 
the Parish House, and the Development of Sociological and Neigh- 
borhood Activities in the Parish; and including the Famous Amster- 
dam Avenue Fight. 


T a Vestry meeting held August 14, 1893, the 
Rev. John P. Peters was elected Rector of St. 
Michael’s Church to succeed his father, and on St. 

Luke’s Day, October 18th, of the same year, he was 
instituted by the Bishop of the Diocese. Born and 
brought up in the parish, in which he had been already 
an assistant for ten years, his rectorship in its general 
policy, as well as in the details of the conduct of services 
and the like, has naturally been a continuance of the 
preceding. By the time of his accession to the cure, 
St. Michael’s had become a city church and the neigh- 
borhood, while not yet fully built up, was a portion of 
the great city. Even the name of Bloomingdale had 
passed away, and to the annoyance and disgust of 
those who, trained in the old ways, had been wont to 
look down upon the lower level of Harlem, people had 
begun to designate this region also by that name. 
Bloomingdale Road and the old winding lanes had 
been obliterated and were forgotten, except by title- 
searchers; and even the streets and avenues which 
followed them had changed their names. The Boule- 
177 


178 Annals of St. Michael’s 


vard was now Broadway; Tenth Avenue, Amsterdam; 
Eleventh, West End, etc. 

Nor was St. Michael’s any longer the only church 
or one of the very few which ministered to the popu- 
lation of this district. It stood now on the same level 
with a multitude of other churches already built or 
preparing to build on every side. The little Presby- 
terian church in the wood at 84th Street had become 
a large new structure of stone on 86th Street and Am- 
sterdam Avenue. Another Presbyterian church had 
been organized at rosth Street and Amsterdam Avenue, 
where it was already erecting a building, to be enlarged 
shortly afterwards, and two more Presbyterian churches 
were about to move up from downtown into the im- 
mediate neighborhood. The Roman Catholic Church 
of the Holy Name had abandoned the old frame building 
erected in 1867, and commenced the construction of a 
great stone church on 96th Street and Amsterdam 
Avenue, and at intervals of half a mile or more up and 
down the west side the Roman Catholics were organizing 
new parishes to care for the large inflowing population. 
The Methodists still worshipped in a wooden structure 
built a dozen or fifteen years before on 1o4th Street, 
but were moving toward the construction of the large 
new Grace Church, now one of the leading Methodist 
churches in the city, the construction of that building to 
be followed by the removal to this region of another large 
church to accommodate the growing membership. The 
Baptists were building or about to build at ro4th Street 
to the north and g2nd Street to the south: A German 
church had been built on tooth Street, almost under the 
eaves of St. Michael’s, to care for the German Lutherans, 
who in the lack of other church accommodations had for 
so many years found a home in this old parish. 


An Influx of Churches 179 


Our own Church was likewise moving to provide 
new buildings and new parishes for the west side. In 
1892 the old building of the Leake and Watts Orphan 
Asylum was opened as a pro-cathedral, for regular 
services, which were later transferred to the Crypt. 
While the Cathedral has refused to accept any parochial 
responsibilities, for all practical purposes, including 
attendance at the parish church and contributions 
toward the support of the same, the result of the work 
there has been to cut off the northern section of St. 
Michael’s parish, making its present practical limits 
togth Street, although theoretically the boundary is 
116th Street. The construction of the beautiful chapel 
of St. Elizabeth at the Memorial Hospital, and the 
opening of the chapel of St. Luke’s Hospital, also de- 
veloped small separate centres of religious life within 
the parish. Other institutions which have moved up 
into the neighborhood, like the Home for Respectable 
Aged and Indigent Females, the Blind Home, St. 
Luke’s Home for Old Men and Aged Couples, and St. 
Luke’s Home for Old Ladies, have also chapels of their 
own in which services are held for the inmates. Before 
St. Michael’s was completed the new All Angels’ Church 
had been built on 81st Street and West End Avenue 
and Trinity had commenced to build its new chapel of 
St. Agnes, with its large parish house, and Trinity 
School adjoining, on g2nd Street, between Amsterdam 
and Columbus avenues, thus pushing up the boundaries 
of St. Michael’s parish on the south to g6th Street. 
While there was abundant room and much need for 
services on the west side for both of these churches, 
and for others which were to follow, their particular 
character did not tend to make the work of St. Michael’s 
any easier but rather harder. While technically a 


180 Annals of St. Michael’s 


free church, by a device of evasion, the assignment of 
seats according to the amount of the subscription, 
All Angels’ became in fact a class church, intended 
for the well-to-do. St. Agnes, also, on which, as in 
the case of Trinity Chapel almost half a century before, 
Trinity had spent more than twice the sum which it 
spends on churches in poor localities, unable to provide 
for themselves, was a pewed church. This was not 
for the reason generally assigned for renting or selling 
pews, the need of revenue, but apparently because 
Trinity Corporation believes in class churches; one 
sort for the wealthy and another for the poor. Here 
were realized precisely those conditions which Dr. T. 
M. Peters had described in a sermon preached before 
the Free Church Guild, in St. Ann’s Church, December 


4, 1873: 


You have given us here a terrible burden to bear. We 
must make bricks and you monopolize the straw. If we go 
outside of New York, or perhaps we may say of our large 
cities, you will find the system of free-will offerings so far 
successful, that nearly one-half the churches of our Com- 
munion in the United States are now entirely free; and 
there are dioceses in which, with one or two exceptions. 
every church is free. This spread of the practice indicates 
of itself the general success. In this city the very name 
of free church for long years had its synonym in “poor 
people’s church.” The multiplication by rich pewed 
churches of free churches intended for the poor, has cast 
a sympathizing shadow over all free churches. Even to 
this day to say, one goes to a free church, is at least a con- 
fession that one does not go where fashionable people gather ; 
that most of their fellow worshippers are plain, many poor. 
The pewed churches, not the free, are however responsible 
for this condition of things. Their first aim is to offer ad- 
vantages which will gain them a revenue; ours to get a 


Social Distinctions in the Church 181 


congregation. They induce the rich to attend. We suc- 
ceed in persuading the poor to enter. All have equally 
souls to be saved, but it is much easier to carry on ar- 
rangements for the saving of souls that can pay, than 
of those which cannot. If we have the latter, it is because 
they have the former. Remove all the social distinctions 
out of Christ’s kingdom, so that as we stand in God’s sight, 
thus we assemble also in church, high and low, rich and 
poor, one with another, all perfectly equal in our spiritual 
relations, and it will no longer be objected that financially 
the free church is a failure. 


And elsewhere in the same sermon he says: 


A survey of the Church which proclaimed at first the 
destruction of privilege and equality of membership, 
and practised the community of wealth, reveals now the 
wonderful and sad conformity of the Church to the world. 
The social ranks; the exclusiveness of wealth; its com- 
fortable enjoyments; its gratified tastes; the worship of 
money in elevating into false position him who seems to 
possess it; the lifting up those who stand high; the 
crowding down those who are already low; the thousand 
points which mark the increasing inequality of the world: 
behold them all reproduced and triumphant here in the 
Church. So far as, and whereinsoever this is so, the pro- 
gress of Christianity, bound up in the existence of the 
Church, will be impeded and checked. No attempts at 
compensation can balance or neutralize an evil whose 
foundation is inequality, in those respects in which Chris- 
tians were once made equal before God. 

One of the evils and abuses of the Church of this day 
is the assigning for money in ownership or exclusive pos- 
session pews or seats in the house of God. That which was 
introduced for one purpose, has been pressed into quite 
an antagonistic service. That which was once designed 
to bring people into church, now operates to keep them out 
of it. 


182 Annals of St. Michael’s 


The natural result of these conditions is that many 
persons of means, living territorially in St. Michael’s 
parish, who would, conditions being equal, attend and 
support that church, desirous to advance or maintain 
their social position by means of their church relations, 
and being led to regard St. Michael’s as a church for 
the poor or those inferior socially, have connected 
themselves with these more well-to-do parishes, thus 
depriving St. Michael’s of that amount of financial sup- 
port and laying a greater burden upon the poor with 
whom they should have united in the work and worship 
of their own parish and neighborhood. It should be 
added, also, that in the upbuilding of this region the 
immediate neighborhood of St. Michael’s Church toward 
the River, where the richer people have their houses, has 
been singularly slow in development, while the region 
toward Columbus Avenue has built up with the poorest 
class of tenements on the upper west side. St. Michael’s 
is therefore admirably situated for preaching the Gospel, 
with a large poor population at its very doors; but 
not so favorably located from the purse or pocket point 
of view. 

When the congregation moved into the new church 
it was almost entirely unadorned. Mr. R. L. Lamb, 
whose family had been worshippers in the old church, 
had erected two windows on the west aisle in memory 
of his wife and mother, the Guest window from the old 
church had been set up in the west gallery, and a couple 
of small windows from the old church on the stairway 
to that gallery; outside of this the great windows of the 
new church were all of plain, unadorned cathedral 
glass. The little wooden altar from the old church 
had been placed in the great chancel, a plain deal 
table serving as altar in the Chapel of the Angels. The 


JP9ueYD preMo} surxooT 
HOYNHS GYIHL 4O YOIMSLNI 


Decorating the Church 183 


pulpit was a plain wooden platform; the lectern, the 
wooden eagle lectern from the old church, a book-rest 
from the Sunday School room serving as lectern for 
the chapel. The only new article of furniture, outside 
of the simple pews and stalls, was the rector’s handsome 
chair, given as a gift of love to Dr. T. M. Peters by the 
children of the institutions. At the time of his jubilee, 
in 1892, a new font had also been given to the church 
by various members of the congregation. 

Dr. Peters had never expected to decorate the church, 
but left that as an obligation to his successor. The work 
began, as such things will, almost accidentally. People 
complained of the lack of a communion rail. They could 
not kneel without some support in front of them, and 
at a vestry meeting held October 10, 1893, a com- 
mittee was appointed with power to contract for an 
altar rail. The committee at once found that it could 
not contract for an altar rail without considering the 
relation of that altar rail to the entire furnishing and 
decoration of the chancel, and so it began to make 
inquiries with a view to laying before the Vestry a 
plan for that which it supposed would actually be under- 
taken at some future time. Artists and church decora- 
tion firms, seeing the great possibilities of the noble 
chancel of St. Michael’s, made advances and proposi- 
tions as to the method of handling the same. It was 
a period of business depression, when there was little 
demand for work of this kind and prices were corres- 
pondingly low and terms favorable. Accordingly, 
after careful consideration, it seemed to the Vestry 
desirable to take in hand at that time the furnishing 
and decoration of the chancel. The Peters family 
offered to erect an altar in memory of the late Thomas 
McClure Peters, and on May 14, 1894, that offer was 


184 Annals of St. Michael’s 


accepted. The Vestry decided to put in chancel win- 
dows at the same time, using for that purpose two 
legacies from members of old St. Michael’s Church, 
$4000 from Charles 8. Weyman and $2500 from Miss 
Elizabeth Low, to which was added a little later a gift 
of $1000 from a former vestryman, H. C. von Post. 
Out of a number of competitive designs, the Vestry 
selected that of Mr. Louis Tiffany. The original 
agreement provided only for the five chancel windows. 
To these the Vestry added later the two mosaic niches 
on either side of the five windows and the decoration 
of the chancel to the spring of the dome. The children 
of a former rector, Rev. James Cook Richmond, also 
gave a credence in memory of their father, and an 
altar cross, vases, and candlesticks were presented in 
remembrance of one who had done faithful service as 
choir-mother and member of the Altar Guild, Mary 
Louise Lawrance, wife of Harry B. Livingston. The 
altar and credence were completed (the altar of the 
old church was removed to the Chapel of the Angels, 
to be joined there shortly by the eagle lectern, where 
both have remained in use in loving memory of the 
second church) and dedicated on Easter, 1895, the 
windows and the mosaic niches on Christmas of the 
same year. 

Since that date, two memorial windows have 
been placed in the Chapel of the Angels, one in 
memory of Constance Caroline Roome and the other, 
given by the ladies of the church and friends, in 
memory of Alice Clarissa Richmond Peters, and two 
in the eastern transept, one a gift from St. Agnes Guild 
and one a memorial, given by his daughter, of Dr. A. 
V. Williams, “for thirty years vestryman and warden 
of St. Michael’s Church, a physician filled with the 


INTERIOR OF THIRD CHURCH 
x. Chapel of the Angels 


2. View of Nave from Chancel 


. 


Planning a Parish House 185 


spirit of the Lord and love for his fellow-men.”’ A 
lectern was also given by Mr. and Mrs. S. J. Luckings 
in memory of a former worshipper and devoted worker, 
Alvira Chitry. 

In this present centenary year the decoration of 
the chancel has been completed; a pulpit erected, as 
a gift from those who heard the Gospel preached 
in the first century of the church’s history, that 
the same good tidings of great love may be preached 
through the century that is to come; and a baptismal 
window, placed in the south wall, adjoining the chancel, 
by the children baptized in the first century of the 
church’s history; pulpit and window together symbo- 
lizing Christ’s final command to His apostles to “go, 
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”’ 

Dr. Peters also bequeathed to his successor the task 
of building the Parish House. The first step towards 
the fulfilment of that bequest was the acquisition, in 
1893, of a lot on Amsterdam Avenue immediately to 
the north of the church, it having been Dr. Peters’s 
plan that the Parish House should occupy the space 
intervening between the northern end of the church 
and tooth Street on that avenue. On November 1a, 
1893, the Vestry took formal action looking to the 
erection of a parish house by appointing a Committee 
on Ways and Means. On December 23rd, that Com- 
mittee presented to the Vestry a rough estimate of 
$60,000 as the cost of the sort of building needed, ex- 
clusive of land. In the meantime, negotiations had 
been conducted for the purchase of the corner lot on 
Amsterdam Avenue and tooth Street, but the owner, 
supposing it to be necessary to the church, held it at 
a price which the Vestry felt to be excessive. 


186 Annals of St. Michael’s 


When the late Dr. Peters bought the land opposite St. 
Michael’s Church on Bloomingdale Road, he did so for 
the purpose of protecting the church, making at the 
time a proposition to exchange that land for some of 
the church land on Clendining Lane, which proposition 
was refused, the two parties not being able to agree 
as to the relative values of those properties. On the 
land thus acquired by him Dr. Peters had accumulated 
some three wooden buildings, which were finally rented 
to the church in whole or in part for temporary parish 
houses. It had been his intention, so soon as the 
time was ripe, to make a contribution towards the 
erection of a parish house, and his family now offered 
this land to the church for parish house purposes at 
a price which would include, at least in part, the gift 
he had proposed to make. The offer was accepted and 
the land purchased, but it was almost two years before 
steps were actually taken to raise funds to erect the 
much needed building. The completion of the decora- 
tion of the chancel, the building of a crypt beneath the 
Chapel of the Angels, the completion of various outside 
work about the church, including an iron fence, had all 
cost money, which had to be drawn from the church 
funds. The hard times had made themselves felt in the 
contributions of the congregation. On April 8, 1895, 
the Vestry considers the necessity of increasing the col- 
lections, and orders that a circular letter be prepared 
and distributed to the members of the congregation 
calling attention to the small amount contributed 
by them for current expenses, and the need of a larger 
revenue for the maintenance of the services and work 
of the church; and on May 13th the Finance Com- 
mittee presents a report calling for immediate and 
large retrenchment in the budget. 


Planning a Parish House 187 


But the need of a parish house for the rapidly de- 
veloping parish work was pressing. Already in the 
year book of 1894 mention is made of the efforts which 
members of the congregation are making to raise funds 
for such a building and of a committee organized for 
that purpose. Finally, on June 10, 1895, in spite of 
the unfavorable condition of the treasury, the Vestry 
appointed a special Finance Committee to raise funds 
for a parish house and a Building Committee to pro- 
cure plans. Out of several plans presented, the 
Vestry selected, October 14, 1895, the plans of Mr. 
Carles T. Merry for a building estimated to cost 
$70,000. Towards this building $25,000 were realized 
by the sale of the remainder of the church land on 
Clendining Lane, and in 1896 the Vestry ordered the 
erection of half of the parish house, containing Sunday 
School rooms, gymnasium, church offices, guild rooms, 
and parlor, the most immediately necessary portions 
of the proposed building. The work began in July, 
1896, and the building was occupied in June, 1897, the 
cost being $41,509.94, of which $25,000 was paid for 
by the sale of land, the remainder being derived from 
the contributions of the parish then and later. Lyceum 
Hall was removed, and the one-time tavern and general 
store, later added to by Dr. Peters and developed first 
into a house for the children of his institutions and 
then into a temporary parish house, which stood be- 
hind it facing old Bloomingdale Road, was turned 
about, moved down to ggth Street, and re-formed into 
a temporary rectory. 

And here for some time the work of material better- 
ment halted. For seven years there had been a con- 
tinual demand for money for purposes of construction, 
and over $70,000 had been contributed by members 


188 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of the parish and outside friends, a very large amount 
for a congregation as poor as that of St. Michael’s. 
The section of the Parish House built in 1897 soon 
proved inadequate for the growing work of the parish, 
but it seemed impossible to secure funds for its com- 
pletion. The givers were exhausted or felt that 
they had given all they should be asked to give; and 
so for four years the Parish House remained incom- 
plete, only half of it constructed. Then, on October 
14, 1901, the senior warden, William R. Peters, offered 
to complete the building, which, according to the orig- 
inal proposition contained in the appeal for money to 
construct the house, was to be a memorial to his father. 
His offer was accepted November 3, 1901, and the 
Parish House was dedicated to the service of God in 
memory of Thomas McClure Peters on All Saints’ Day, 
November 1, 1902; and so the second work which he 
had bequeathed to his successor was accomplished.! 
To show the general development and growth of the 
church work in the years covered by this chapter, I 
shall excerpt from the Vestry records, year books, and 
Messenger various. miscellaneous items. Owing to 
the rapid growth of the neighborhood and the ineffi- 
ciency and lack of foresight of the city government, 
it came to pass by 1896 that the schools of this neigh- 
borhood were totally inadequate to provide for the 
number of children of school age. Classes were en- 
larged beyond the limits of efficiency and still hundreds 
of children were left unprovided for, many of them 
1 Mr. Carles T. Merry having died in the meantime, Mr. R. W. 
Gibson, the architect of the church, became the architect of the 
completed Parish House. The original plan was also somewhat 
reduced in size, the erection of a separate library building for the 


Bloomingdale Library rendering the library contained in the original 
pians of the Parish House superfluous. 


THE MEMORIAL PARISH HOUSE 
Consecrated All Saints Day, 1902 


A Public School Annex 189 


members of our own parish. In this emergency, 
October 12, 1896, the Vestry offered to the Board of 
Education, free of charge, the use during week-days of 
the larger portion of the buildings then used by it for 
temporary parish houses. The offer was unwillingly 
declined, because the buildings did not and could not 
be made to comply with the legal requirements for 
school buildings; but in the following year, when the 
first half of the Parish House was completed, the 
school board offered to lease and did lease the larger 
part of that building during week-days, and for 
two years it served as an annex public school. Not 
only, however, was there a lack of public schools 
in this neighborhood at that time, there were 
also no night schools whatever. To demonstrate 
‘the demand for such schools in this neighborhood, 
which we believed to be a necessity, Mr. Robert B. 
Keyser offered his services to conduct a night school 
in the temporary parish house of St. Michael’s Church, 
and on February 8, 1897, rooms in that building were 
granted him for the purpose. The result of this ex- 
periment, and of active agitation by St. Michael’s 
branch of C A I L, was that in the following year the 
Board of Education opened a night school in the nearest 
public school building in the neighborhood. 

In 1897 the church came under the religious cor- 
poration act of 1895, according to which one warden 
and three vestrymen only are elected each year, the 
object being to secure greater permanence and con- 
tinuity in the Vestry, and thereby also better protection 
of property interests. 

In 1900 the Vestry adopted the plan of assigning 
seats in the church. Many complained that it was 
not easy for families to sit together, and that, being 


190 Annals of St. Michael’s 


seated one Sunday in one place and one in another, they 
did not acquire the home sense in connection with the 
church. It was the opinion also of the clergy that 
assignment of seats would prove an assistance in 
parochial administration, furnishing a sort of nucleus 
of persons anchored to the church by their sittings, 
and enabling the clergy and others to determine more 
readily the presence or absence of regular attendants 
and to ascertain who were strangers and newcomers. 
The method of assigning seats in use in our fellow free 
church of Zion and St. Timothy was therefore adopted 
in St. Michael’s on December 1oth of that year. Ac- 
cording to that method, sittings are assigned for the 
eleven o’clock service only, and in order of application, 
with no regard to the amount of the contribution of 
the applicant, which in fact no one but the rector knows, 
or whether he contributes at all. Such seats are not, 
however, in any sense, to be regarded as the property 
of those to whom they are assigned, but are available 
for their use only if they are present and in their 
seats before the clergy and choir enter the church. 
After that the ushers show people to all vacant seats 
without regard to any assignment. 

In 1902, $25,000 was offered to the Vestry on con- 
dition that it should erect a small hospital building 
to be used in connection with the Clinic. This offer 
it was obliged to decline, since such a hospital would . 
have made a new and somewhat considerable demand 
upon the annual budget, already so swollen by the 
expenses of the Parish House that each year the church 
was obliged to borrow from the Cemetery income, 
against the protest of the Treasurer and to the regret 
of the rector and Vestry. In the following year, 1903, 
occurred the forgery and defalcation of the treasurer’s 


Guilds and Organizations I9I 


assistant, by which the church lost over $40,000, the 
obligation of replacing which rendered still more 
difficult the financing of its large work. It was sup- 
posed before that time that the church had taken every 
precaution to guard against such a possibility. Every 
year the books had been audited by a professional 
auditor, but he had failed to note the fraud which was 
being perpetrated. Since that date still more careful 
methods have been adopted, including a monthly 
audit by the Auditing Committee of the Vestry, in ad- 
dition to the annual audit conducted for the Com- 
mittee by a professional auditor. 

The former rector left a parish admirably organized. 
There were organizations to cover every phase of 
church work, and to furnish a means and place of 
activity and of recreation for church members of both 
sexes and all ages. These guilds and organizations 
were, for the most part, merely developed with the 
removal into the Parish House, and to this day the 
general scheme of organization of parish work existing 
in the last years of Dr. Peters’s rectorship has been con- 
tinued. Some new organizations have of course come 
into existence during these fourteen years and others 
passed away. One interesting and rather unusual 
organization, started in 1892, Searchlight, did valuable 
work in the parish for the first eight years of the present 
_rectorate. This was an organization of women who 
visited systematically, each having an allotted district, 
in the tenement and apartment houses, finding out 
people who had no church connection, children who 
did not go to Sunday School, men and women who 
needed the ministrations of the clergy, and at the 
same time ascertaining the sanitary and other condi- 
tions of those houses, with a view to curing or pre- 


192 Annals of St. Michael’s 


venting moral and physical evil. Another organiza- 
tion of boys, which existed for a few years and did an 
admirable work during the period of its existence, was 
the Loving Service Society. The head of this organiza- 
tion contrived to inspire a large band of boys with an 
almost incredible zeal to do something for some one in 
the way of service. As is usually the case with or- 
ganizations of this sort, both Searchlight and Loving 
Service depended on the personality of their originators, 
and when these were unable to continue to lead the 
organizations they had started, on account of other 
obligations, those organizations themselves passed out 
of existence. 

In 1895, at the suggestion and through the efforts 
of the rector’s wife, to which are to be attributed also 
the Girls’ Friendly Society and the Bloomingdale Day 
Nursery, a clothing bureau was started, which has 
continued to this day a valuable adjunct of the work 
of the parish, furnishing occupation to a number of 
women in making and mending garments, and ren- 
dering it possible for others to secure new clothing and 
half-worn garments at a low price. Out of the Clothing 
Bureau grew, in 1899, the Mothers’ Meetings, which 
in their turn have resulted in a Women’s Guild. A 
Men’s Guild was organized in 1902. New organizations 
of young men have come into existence as a consequence 
of the facilities of the Parish House, in the form of 
gymnasium classes and military organizations, which 
latter seem especially to be the present fad «mong 
boys and young men. Debating clubs, camera clubs, 
dramatic guilds, and social organizations of one sort 
and another have come and gone, attesting and develop- 
ing the value of the Parish House as the workshop 
and the clubhouse of the parish. 


PARISH HOUSE WORK 
1. Girls’ Friendly Society 


2. Gymnasium Class 


Parish House Work 103 


The Parish House has also been effective in the 
educational work of the church. And here, too, 
various agencies have grown up, continued, or been 
abandoned, as the needs of the movement and the 
assistance available indicated. The Sewing School, 
begun almost a half a century ago, was continued 
and largely developed in the present Parish House, 
serving a constituency drawn from the neighbor- 
hood at large, until about two years ago, when, in 
view of the introduction of industrial instruction in 
the public schools, and the difficulty of obtaining 
volunteer teachers who were willing and able to instruct 
the children on Saturday mornings, according to the 
modern scientific methods of sewing-school instruction, 
it seemed better to close our school. Sewing classes 
are maintained, however, in connection with a number 
of girls’ guilds and organizations, together with dress- 
making, millinery, cooking, and other similar classes. 
Carpentry, and other similar industrial work, have also 
been introduced more and more, as opportunity per- 
mitted, in the boys’ guilds and organizations. Last 
year a Bible Vacation School for the neighborhood was 
conducted in the Parish House, but as the Board of 
Education has located its vacation school for this 
district in the immediate neighborhood of the church 
it did not seem necessary to continue that enterprise. 
The rector of the church was, from its organization 
in 1899, for a number of years an active member of the 
Sunday School Commission of the Diocese, and the 
Sunday School has had the full advantage of the work 
of that commission, which it has been able to utilize 
effectively, thanks to the Parish House. The Sunday 
School rooms of the Parish House are almost ideal, 
_ and St. Michael’s has one unique department in the 
13 


194 Annals of St. Michael’s 


maps and models of the Jerusalem Chamber. We had 
for some years, also, the model mission room of the 
city. Here again we have an example of the possibili- 
ties of individualitv in the work of such a parish. The 
person who originated and developed this department 
left the parish, and no one else grasped the work. 
Almost every year some new work originates or passes 
away, as workers with zeal, energy, and sympathetic 
originality come and go. 

Outside of the parish, understood as the member- 
ship of the church, the Parish House has also been 
an active agency for good in the neighborhood at large, 
and in another chapter will be found an account of the 
neighborhood organizations developed from St. Mi- 
chael’s Parish House as headquarters. The effort has 
been to make the Parish House not only a parish home 
but also a neighborhood guild house. Here have been 
held all sorts of meetings and gatherings for the public 
good, from single mass meetings to more permanent 
clubs and organizations, such as the Lincoln Club of 
boys of the Waring League, organized this spring to 
keep the streets clean and decent. The Parish House 
was also, in the time of the existence of that associa- 
tion, the home of the West Side Sunday Closing Asso- 
ciation, with delegates from various churches, and 
not a few other associations and organizations 
of a reformatory character have been allowed or 
encouraged to use its rooms for their meetings. 
Of these one of the most interesting was The 
Work Together, an association of builders, archi- 
tects, and representatives of the building trades, 
with a few members who represented the general 
benevolent public, and the rector of St. Michael’s 
as president. This lasted for about two years, 


Change of Population 195 


from 1900 to 1902, and was a power for peace in 
its day. 

During the rectorship of the present incumbent, 
the population of the parish has not only very largely 
increased, it has also considerably changed. In the 
autumn of 1894, at the suggestion of the pastor of the 
West End Presbyterian Church, a religious census was 
made of the community of which this church is a part, 
from which it appeared that 24 per cent. of the total 
population hereabout claimed to be Episcopalians. 
The Roman Catholics outnumbered us in the lowest 
strata of the population and the Presbyterians almost 
equalled us among the richer classes (18 per cent.), 
but it was interesting to observe that Episcopalians, 
and Episcopalians only, were equally distributed through 
all strata of society, an evidence of the value of the 
work done in this city through the instrumentality of 
the City Mission Society. 

With the organization of the Federation of 
Churches, St. Michael’s Church took part with 
others in a more elaborate census of the entire 21st 
Assembly District in the spring of 1898, and the 
rector of the parish became the president of the 
Auxiliary of the Federation for this district. The 
second census showed a considerable increase in the 
foreign and non-Protestant population of this section 
of the city. Some of the facts disclosed by that census 
were rather startling. Out of 379 families reported in 
the tier of blocks between 89th and 102d _ streets, and 
Broadway and the River, the most well-to-do section 
of the district, 233 professed to have no church home, of 
whom 60 were Episcopalians, 36 Presbyterians, 28. 
Roman Catholics, and 21 Jews. Evidently there was. 
developing in New York, for this section of the city 


196 Annals of St. Michael’s 


is not strange in that regard, a very large population, 
nominally Christian, without any real church connec- 
tion. Two later censuses have been made since that 
time, showing an increase rather than a decrease of 
the same conditions, and making evident the need of 
combination on the part of the churches if the com- 
munity is to be reached effectively. These censuses 
have shown a progressive increase in the Jewish 
population, especially of fairly well-to-do Jews; in 
certain sections numbers of Italians have come in; 
and on goth Street a colored colony, almost 3000 
strong, has located itself. There is no stratum of the 
population which would show to-day 24 per cent. 
of Episcopalians. 

One result of the Federation work has been the 
districting of this section of the city, and the assign- 
ment, toeach church of any kind willing to co-operate, 
of what is called a co-operative parish, a district in 
which it shall be the duty of that church to visit every 
house or apartment once in the year, reporting the 
results on blanks prepared for the purpose, so that all 
professing a preference for Presbyterianism may be fol- 
lowed up by the local Presbyterian Church, Methodists 
by the Methodist Church, and soon. Furthermore it is 
supposed to be the duty of each church to patrol its 
co-operative parish, so to speak, for the prevention or 
removal of evil conditions, moral or physical, all 
working together in the larger matters which affect 
the well-being, spiritual or temporal, of the district 
in general. 

If in any direction St. Michael’s Parish has struck 
out in new lines during the rectorship of the present 
incumbent, it is in relation to social and neighborhood 
work. In this, however, the rector has only developed 


CG Aeliie Bog 


somewhat more fully the principles of the past. It 
was no new thing to throw St. Michael’s Church open 
freely for meetings to advance new thoughts and ideas, 
or to bespeak sympathy and succor for the poor and 
oppressed of this or any nation. Peculiar conditions 
have led to a somewhat freer use of such meetings in 
later years. So in 1895 and 1896, at the time of the 
persecution of the Armenians, meetings on their behalf 
were held in St. Michael’s Church, and their appreciation 
of the activities of this parish and its members in their 
distress is witnessed by the rug presented by the Ar- 
menian Protestant Church of this city to St. Michael’s 
Church at its Centenary. Similar meetings were held 
in 1904 in behalf of the persecuted Macedonians, and 
in 1906 in behalf of the negroes of the Congo Free 
State. But perhaps the most interesting of all these 
meetings was one held in St. Michael’s Church in 1895, 
on the occasion of a clothing strike on the East Side. 
On that occasion the Bishop presided in his robes, 
seated in the chancel, while Jewish workmen stood 
before him and told the congregation of their conditions 
and their needs. It was interesting to see how men of 
this different faith, out of courtesy to the church which 
had thrown open its doors that they might present 
their cause to the Christian community, joined lustily 
in the singing of the Christian hymns in the service 
which preceded and followed their appeal. 

This meeting, and another which followed it in the in- 
terest of tenement house reform, was held at the instiga- 
tion and under the auspices of C A I L, the Church Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of the Interests of Labor. 
This association, under the leadership of Miss Harriet A. 
Keyser, a member of the church, was for some time a 
most efficient factor in developing the social work of 


198 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the parish, with its tenement-house, sweat-shop, labor, 
and other similar committees, and its varied activities 
and agitations for better conditions in bake shops, for 
motormen, etc. Of late years, owing to the removal 
and death of some of its formerly active members, and 
the development of the general society at the expense 
of St. Michael’s branch, which at one time constituted 
almost the whole of C AI L, those particular committees 
have disappeared, and the social activities of the 
parish are manifested and expressed in different forms 
and by other agencies. This social work again did not 
originate in the present rectorate. St. Michael’s 
branch of C A I L was organized before Dr. Peters’s 
death, and in his last annual sermon he laid it upon the 
conscience of the parishioners of St. Michael’s that, the 
work of Church extension in which the parish had been 
engaged for seventy years being now completed, it 
was its next duty to provide for the needs of its own 
immediate and rapidly growing neighborhood. 

The theory of the Church’s obligation in this regard, 
under which the various works above described were 
undertaken, was set forth by the present rector in a 
little pamphlet published by the Church Social Union 
in 1896, entitled ‘What One Parish is Doing for Social 
Reform,” from which I venture to quote the closing 
words: 


It seems to me clear that we cannot content ourselves 
with missionary societies, Dorcas societies, boys’ clubs, 
Girls’ Friendly societies and the like, but that the field of 
Church work is far broader still than this. Not that these 
things should be left undone, but that other things should 
be added to them. Iam sure that the day is coming when 
it will be regarded as a legitimate and necessary part of the 
activities of a well-organized parish to have a school com- 


Social Reform 199 


mittee for the purpose of looking into the condition of our 
schools, disclosing and reforming abuses, and procuring 
for the parish what the parish needs in the way of public 
school equipment; to have a street-cleaning committee, 
which shall make it its duty to see that the streets of the 
parish are properly cleaned, for the sake particularly of the 
health and comfort of the poorer persons and the little chil- 
dren who reside in our parishes; to have a tenement-house 
committee; or if not precisely these committees at least 
guilds and societies and clubs to work for social reform, 
which guilds, societies and the like will take their place in our 
parish work side by side with missionary societies, Dorcas 
societies, and so forth. 

There are to-day young men and young women who are 
willing to work, but who do not find any satisfactory out- 
let for their energies. They are full of the spirit of self- 
sacrifice, but rightly or wrongly they feel that there is no 
place for them in what is ordinarily known as parish work. 
They wish to deal with the social and economic problems 
of the day, and they complain that the Church makes no 
provision for such work. This material we need to utilize 
and organize in our churches, in the same way in which 
we have utilized and organized other material to care for 
the sick, the needy, the aged and infirm, the orphans and 
the fallen. Work for better social and economic condi- 
tions is as much a work for the spread of Christ’s Kingdom 
on earth as any of these. 


In general, St. Michael’s Parish has been kept pretty 
clean, free from objectionable resorts, and the laws have 
been on the whole well enforced, thanks in part, cer- 
tainly, to the activity and wakefulness of members of 
St. Michael’s Church. About the beginning of the 
present century, however, owing partly to the famous 
“scattering of vice,’’ the neighborhood was invaded 
by a number of objectionable and law-breaking saloons, 


200 Annals of St. Michael’s 


and the neighborhood of 110th Street came to be known 
as “little Coney Island,” on account of its congrega- 
tion of low dance halls and similar resorts. Had the 
churches, then united in Auxiliary D of the Federation 
of Churches, stood firmly together in opposing this evil, 
and demanding a rigid enforcement of the law, such a 
condition would probably never have arisen, or at 
least the evil would never have reached such propor- 
tions. Moreover, by serving the community in this 
regard, the churches would collectively and individu- 
ally have strengthened their hold on the community. 
Unfortunately some of the churches declined to co- 
operate in law-enforcement work, holding that this 
was outside of the proper functions of the Church, and 
Auxiliary D was finally dissolved, to be revived, how- 
ever, a couple of years later, in 1904, under another 
form and with a larger territorial field. A new or- ~ 
ganization of property holders was formed to meet the 
situation thus created, the Riverside and Morningside 
Heights Association, which in so far represented the 
church membership of the neighborhood that the 
pastors of three Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, and 
Presbyterian churches were made vice-presidents of the 
association, and after a struggle of a couple of years 
with the dance hall proprietors, the Excise Department, 
and the local authorities, “little Coney Island” was 
finally cleaned up. 

No description of the social and neighborhood work 
connected with St. Michael’s Church would be complete 
without some account of the famous Amsterdam 
Avenue fight. In 1893 the Good Government Clubs 
were organized in this city for the purpose of bringing 
together men of both parties and no party on the 
common platform of good business administration of 


Amsterdam Avenue Fight 201 


the affairs of the city. The originator of that move- 
ment started the first club, A, in the upper Fifth 
Avenue neighborhood. The second club, B, was or- 
ganized in this neighborhood. In the autumn of that 
same year Club B held a convention in Lyceum Hall, 
then used as a parish house, and put in nomination 
its own candidate for the Assembly, as a protest against 
the corrupt party politics represented in the nominee 
of the then dominant party. It succeeded in electing 
its candidate that year and the next. Twice after 
this it was compelled to put up independent candidates, 
but in general it may be said that, as a result of its 
activities, the candidates for the Senate and Assembly 
from this part of the city nominated by both parties 
have been men of unusual capacity and independence, 
and those elected have been on the whole worthy 
‘representatives of the citizens, instead of mere repre- 
sentatives of political bosses or organizations. 
Somewhere in the fifties a city charter had been 
given for a railroad company to run up Tenth Avenue, 
one of the conditions being that it should continue to 
the Harlem River. In 1873 this charter was acquired by 
the Forty-Second Street, St. Nicholas, and Manhattan- 
ville Railroad, which, however, instead of building on 
Tenth Avenue, built on the Boulevard (Broadway). 
About 1880 the Ninth Avenue Railroad Company ob- 
tained a charter from the State for a horse-car railway 
on Tenth Avenue, and proceeded to build the same. In 
1891 the Forty-Second Street, St. Nicholas, and Man- 
hattanville Railroad, reviving its long forgotten charter 
and consents, commenced to constructanother horse rail- 
way on Amsterdam Avenue, laying the tracks outside 
of those of the Ninth Avenue on either side. The 
sexton of St. Michael’s Church, Mr. S. J. Luckings, 


202 Annals of St. Michael’s 


commenced suit to enjoin the railroad from laying 
tracks on Amsterdam Avenue, representing in this 
not only his own property interests, but also the inter- 
ests of the church, which at that time deemed it 
expedient that individuals rather than the church 
should act in the matter. He was defeated in the 
court of first instance, appeal was taken but not pressed, 
and the railroad was built. From that time until 
1897 two lines of horse cars ran up Amsterdam Avenue, 
the one on the inner tracks under the control of the 
Metropolitan Railway Company, which had absorbed 
the Sixth Avenue system, to which the Ninth Avenue 
Railway belonged, and the one on the outside tracks 
under the control of its rival system, the Third Avenue 
Railroad Company, which had absorbed the Forty- 
Second Street, St. Nicholas, and Manhattanville 
Railroad. 

In 1897 both of these railroads applied to and ob- 
tained from the State Railroad Commission—an utterly 
inefficient body, supposed to exist to serve the interests 
of the people but in reality merely a tool of the poli- 
ticians and railroad corporations combined—permission 
to change the motive power on their roads on Amsterdam 
Avenue to electricity; and the former obtained also per- 
mission from the then Commissioner of Public Works, 
General Collis, to open the street for the purpose of insti- 
tuting the new system. This was done in midsummer, 
the advertisements required by law never meeting the 
eye of anyone. At this point, by chance, Mr. Luckings 
learned what had been done and called the attention 
of the Rector of St. Michael’s to the danger in the 
community which would result from four tracks of 
electric cars on such a thoroughfare. Not only would 
a railroad avenue with four tracks of electric cars prove 


Slaughter House Avenue 203 


an irreparable injury to the property interests of this 
part of the city, it would also be a serious menace to 
life and limb, especially of those who could not protect 
themselves. There were at least 10,000 children in the 
public schools along that portion of Amsterdam Avenue 
which it was proposed to change into a four-track rail- 
road avenue, besides numerous churches and institu- 
tions for aged people. It was on this ground, as one 
responsible for the care of little children and poor and 
teeble folk, to prevent Amsterdam Avenue from being 
turned into “Slaughter House Avenue,” that the 
Rector of St. Michael’s took the matter up. There 
was a meeting at its club house on rosth Street that 
night, August 30th, of the Executive Committee of 
Good Government Club B, of which Hon. W. B. Ellison 
was then president. The situation was laid before this 
meeting and a committee at once appointed to endeavor 
to prevent the outrage, of which Mr. Thomas A. Fulton, 
business agent of St. Michael’s Parish and assistant 
to the Treasurer, was chairman. This committee 
soon organized a much larger committee, containing 
representatives of the West End Association and 
various local clubs, as well as the churches of the 
district, and St. Michael’s Parish House became the 
headquarters of the “Amsterdam Avenue Anti-Grab 
Committee.”” The public agitation commenced with 
a series of mass meetings held in the various churches 
along the avenue, September oth. Red lights burned 
in St. Michael’s tower, which were answered from the 
West End Presbtyerian Church on the north and Park 
Presbyterian Church on the south, giving the signal 
for the opening of the campaign to educate and arouse 
the community to what was going on, and the meaning 
of it. This was only the beginning of a series of mass 


204 Annals of St. Michael’s 


meetings which gradually aroused the whole city and 
attracted the attention of the State and country. 
As soon as the matter was brought to his attention, 
Mayor Strong announced himself emphatically opposed 
to the four tracks. The school board, the fire com- 
missioners, and other departments of the municipal 
government joined in denouncing four electric tracks 
on Amsterdam Avenue as a menace to life, limb, and 
property. Real estate men and property holders’ 
associations of all kinds, labor unions, and other or- 
ganizations took part in these protests, and the press of 
the city, in various degree—the Mail and Express and 
the Herald leading in energy and effectiveness—by 
presentation in cartoons, editorials, interviews and 
the like, laid before the community the details of the 
proposed spoliation of the public, among other things 
representing the railroad companies as Herods planning 
a modern massacre of the innocents. The Railroad 
Commission made a ridiculous and futile demonstration 
of its own utter incompetence by publicly and officially 
announcing that had it known the facts it would never 
have granted to the roads permission to change their 
motive power, and calling on some one to restrain it 
through the courts. But the courts decided prac- 
tically that a permission once granted was a sacrosanct 
property right, which could not be touched or tampered 
with. 

Fortunately, the Third Avenue Railroad had been 
slow in applying for the requisite permit to open the 
streets, and now General Collis, as a result of the storm 
of indignation which had been aroused, refused to 
give the company a permit, without which it could not 
proceed to change the motive power on its tracks. At 
the same time, however, he refused to withdraw the 


A Mandamus Refused 205 


permit already granted to the Metropolitan Railway 
Company, or even to enforce the terms of that permit, 
or to take advantage of their violation of the same to 
hold up or stop the work. Fearful of interference the 
Metropolitan Company pushed the work of the change 
of power on its line with almost feverish haste, and 
the inner tracks were electrified and electric cars run- 
ning on them before the close of the year. The Third 
Avenue Company went into court to secure a mandamus 
to compel the Commissioner of Public Works to grant 
it a permit to tear up the streets, in which it was 
defeated. Many members of St. Michael’s Church and 
Vestry were by this time taking an active part in the 
fight and Mr. John A. Beall, the junior warden, being 
a lawyer, not only gave the rector the value of his 
unstinted legal aid and advice free of cost, but became 
the chief counsellor and adviser of the whole movement, 
assisted by Mr. John McDonald and Mr. John C. 
Coleman of the West End Association. Mr. Luckings’s 
appeal of 1891 was revived, and the whole question of 
the rights of the Third Avenue Railroad Company on 
Amsterdam Avenue reopened. It was on the basis 
of the evidence which the lawyers presented that the 
courts refused to grant the Third Avenue Railroad the 
mandamus asked for. This was, however, only a 
temporary advantage. It was necessary to secure in 
Albany legislation permanently to prohibit the four 
tracks, and for this purpose a bill was drawn up, orig- 
inally by representatives of the Independent Club of 
the Twenty-First Assembly District (this was the new 
name and title of the former Good Government Club 
B), and introduced by the Senator and Assemblyman 
of the district, John Ford and T. J. Murray. 

The church practically put Mr. Thomas A. Fulton, 


~ 


206 Annals of St. Michael’s 


its business agent, at the disposition of the committee 
which was fighting for the protection of Amsterdam 
Avenue, and the greater part of his time was devoted 
not to the work of the church, but to the work of the 
committee, either at Albany or in this city, the church 
conceiving that it could in no way better serve the 
public than in protecting and preserving Amsterdam 
Avenue. The corporations and the politicians laughed 
at the idea of a popular agitation defeating their pur- 
poses of public spoliation.. They had seen too much 
agitation of this description set at naught with im- 
punity, even when backed by the whole press of the 
city, to be afraid of this new expression of public indig- 
nation. The bill introduced at Albany was never 
allowed to come to a final vote, being, held up by the 
Railroad Committee until the last moment, and then 
allowed to pass the Senate only to be choked in the 
Assembly by the Committee on Rules. At the same 
time, by way of showing their power, the railroad 
corporations passed the infamous Eldridge bill, giving 
them practically everything belonging to the people 
still unseized. 

The agitation against the four tracks on Amsterdam 
Avenue was continued through the summer and autumn 
of 1898. Prominent gentlemen of the West Side, like 
Mr. Isidor Straus and Mr. Cyrus Clark, working with 
the committee, endeavored to bring about an agree- 
ment between the corporations by which both roads 
should run over the same tracks. The Third Avenue 
Railroad had at first professed itself willing to do this, 
while the Metropolitan, being in possession, had been 
unwilling, claiming that such double use of the tracks 
was physically impossible. Conferences were held with 
the directors of the Metropolitan at their board room, 


Negotiations with Railroads 207 


and later at the house of Mr. W. C. Whitney. Mr. 
Elihu Root, counsel of the Metropolitan Street Railway 
Company, showed conclusively that the Third Avenue 
Railroad Company had no charter rights on Amsterdam 
Avenue and in many other places, and Mr. Lauterbach, 
counsel of the Third Avenue Railroad, showed conclu- 
sively that the Metropolitan Railroad was operating 
its roads in many places without a charter. Mr. 
Vreeland estimated, at Mr. Whitney’s request, the 
cost of a railway from 71st to Manhattan Street 
as $250,000, and Mr. Whitney authorized us to offer 
the Third Avenue Railroad the sum of $300,000 
for its rights on Amsterdam Avenue, which offer the 
latter spurned as ridiculous. It became plain that 
nothing was to be accomplished by negotiations with 
the railroads, and in point of fact those concerned 
came to believe that they could not trust the words or 
assurances of the railroad companies. One day’s 
words were repudiated the following morning; each 
charged the other with fraudulent methods, but both 
stood together against the people. In matters of fact 
the representatives of the roads were guilty of abso- 
lute falsehood, unless they were singularly misinformed ; 
for instance in the autumn or early winter of 1898-9, 
after the electric cars of the Metropolitan Railroad 
Company had been running for about a year on the 
avenue, the responsible representatives of those com- 
panies declared publicly in a hearing before the Com- 
mon Council and elsewhere that the electric cars would 
be much less dangerous than horse cars on Amsterdam 
Avenue, and as evidence stated that during the year 
in which one line of electric cars had been in operation 
on Amsterdam Avenue there had been but one serious 
accident. An examination of the blotters of the police 


208 Annals of St. Michael’s 


stations along the avenue, made by Chief Devery at the 
request of the rector of this church, showed that 
there had been, in point of fact, fifty-one serious acci- 
dents during that period, practically none of which, 
however, had been reported in the press. 

That autumn the candidates for the Legislature 
on both sides all through the West Side were pledged 
in advance to advocate the Committee’s bill for the 
protection of Amsterdam Avenue; for so strong had 
feeling become that no one who did not publicly and 
unhesitatingly stand for such protection had any 
chance of election. With the usual reaction after a 
reform administration, Tammany elected the city 
ticket, and the unspeakable Van Wyck administration 
took office on January 1, 1899. The Commissioner of 
Highways, who had power under the new greater New 
York charter to issue permits for street openings, 
gave the Third Avenue Railroad the permit to open 
the streets which General Collis had refused, and that 
company began at once to turn the lower part of the 
avenue into an open trench preparatory to the work 
of electrifying the outside tracks. The papers openly 
declared that the permit was issued because the com- 
pany had agreed to give the contract to a henchman 
of the “man who owned the city.” Certainly the con- 
tractor commenced operations in a manner which 
seemed intended to show his belief in his own ownership 
of the avenue, putting residents and property holders 
to as great inconvenience as possible. Indeed, through- 
out this struggle the insolent attitude of the representa- 
tives of the Third Avenue Railroad was an important 
factor in rousing the popular indignation. 

The Committee’s bill to protect the avenue was 
introduced in the Legislature early in the session, 


The Church Commences Suit 209 


by John Ford in the Senate, as before, and in the 
Assembly by Edward H. Fallows, who had succeeded 
Murray as the representative of the 21st Assembly 
district. But it was now clear that, even should the 
Legislature pass the bill, which seemed unlikely, the 
injury would already have been done and the four 
electric tracks be an accomplished fact. It was neces- 
sary to find some speedy means of stopping the prosecu- 
tion of the work. The only means available was a new 
suit against the railroad, with an injunction to pre- 
vent them from going on with the work in the mean- 
time. But no private individual or organization 
could be found ready to take the risk and expense 
of such a suit against so powerful a corporation politi- 
cally, with a possible chance of heavy damages to be 
paid afterwards. After careful consultation, not until, 
however, a contingent pledge of $1000 each had been 
obtained from Mr. W. R. Peters, of St. Michael’s 
Church, the Hon. Seth Low, Mr. W. Bayard Cutting and 
Mr. V. Everit Macy, the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry of 
St. Michael’s Church, on January 9, 1899, commenced 
suit to restrain the Third Avenue Company from 
changing the motive power on its tracks on Amsterdam 
Avenue, applying also for an injunction pendente lite. 
Mr. John A. Beall was appointed counsel, with author- 
ity to engage other counsel as he saw fit. The Blind 
Home on r1o4th Street joined St. Michael’s in the suit, 
with Judge Howland as its counsel; Simon Sterne was 
engaged as special counsel by St. Michael’s, and the 
lawyers of the West End Association assisted as before. 
A temporary injunction was obtained, which was made 
permanent on March 6th, so far as the avenue in front 
of the property of the complainants was concerned. 
This action was of inestimable value, both in blocking 


210 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the further progress of the change of power until 
time could be had to secure the necessary legisla- 
tion at Albany, and also in arousing and crystallizing 
public feeling. The press and the community at large 
felt that the action of the church in going into the 
courts had given a solid backbone to the whole move- 
ment, and men like Recorder Goff commended in 
public meetings the action taken for its wisdom and 
its public spirit. During the greater part of the month 
of January the Vestry may be said to have been in 
continuous session. Meetings were held night after 
night, and the vestrymen willingly gave up their 
business and pleasure to attend in the service of the 
people. It was necessary to raise money for the legal 
fight, as well as for the agitation. The church con- 
tributed $100 to the general fund, and appealed to the 
other churches and institutions along the avenue to do 
the same, which most of them did, Columbia College, 
St. Luke’s Hospital, and the Cathedral of St. John 
the Divine giving much larger sums. Property holders 
on the avenue were asked to contribute $25 a lot. At 
first the Rector of St. Michael’s gave his personal 
receipt for these contributions; then the committee 
was organized to handle money matters also, and a 
treasurer appointed for that purpose. The West 
End Association contributed $500, the Good Govern- 
ment Club of the Nineteenth Assembly District 
$250, and ultimately some thousands of dollars were 
collected. 

While the lawyers were fighting in the courts, gath- 
ering and presenting evidence and the like, and Mr. 
Fulton was agitating and organizing mass meetings and 
securing the adherence of new clubs and organizations 
in the different parts of the city, a sharp legislative 


A Message from Croker 211 


battle was being waged in Albany by Ford and Fallows. 
Popular indignation had become so aroused that few 
legislators were willing individually to oppose the 
wishes of the people, but neither organization had as 
yet taken action on the proposed legislation, and the 
leaders of both organizations, in the Senate at least, 
were understood to be against the bill. The great 
difficulty in legislative fights of this character is to 
trace the secret influences which block the progress 
of bills or change their form. A bill is hung up, hear- 
ings are given, amendments are introduced, the bill 
is recommitted, it is put through the Assembly in one 
form and through the Senate in another, and finally it 
falls between the two houses and no one person or 
party can be held responsible. It is not even possible 
always to ascertain whether amendments are offered 
in good faith, what they really mean, and who are 
friends and who are foes. Individually, almost every 
one professed to be in favor of the bill, but this one 
thought it should be amended in this way and that one 
in the other. 

There were some curious little episodes in the long 
fight. By this time all the churches on the West Side 
and some elsewhere had become participants. Father 
Galligan and the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy 
Name especially were a tower of strength. They took 
care of the Roman Catholic churches, we of the Protes- 
tant. On Saturdays a statement of the situation was 
prepared and sent out to the various churches, in which 
distribution the press rendered also most efficient 
service. On Sunday, March 6th, Mr. Richard Croker, 
then head of Tammany Hall, attempted to reach the 
tector of St. Michael’s Church on the telephone, to 
assure him that from that time on he would use all his 


212 Annals of St. Michael’s 


endeavors to have the Tammany legislators array 
themselves on the side of the people. St. Michael’s 
at that time had no telephone, and it chanced that the 
pastor of the Bloomingdale Reformed Church had a 
name strikingly similar to that of the rector of St. 
Michael’s, namely, Madison C. Peters. To him, there- 
fore, by accident, Mr. Croker made his communica- 
tion. That was the first intimation that the political 
leaders realized the seriousness of the people’s move- 
ment. The following evening, at a mass meeting held 
at the West Side Republican Club, a letter was read 
from Mr. Croker to the same effect, which was greeted 
with tumultuous cheers. At the same time Judge 
Scott rendered his decision granting an injunction to 
St. Michael’s Church and the Blind Home on grounds 
which promised ultimate victory and which showed 
how supine and derelict the city authorities had been 
and were in permitting such robbery of the streets. 
There was great rejoicing that night, some one chimed 
the bells, and the whole neighborhood thought the bat- 
tle was won. There was very serious danger of ultimate 
disaster as a result of over-confidence. 

The Third Avenue Company continued to press the 
work of construction on Amsterdam Avenue, for the 
injunction covered only that part of the avenue in front 
of the property of the complainants. The Tammany 
Mayor and Corporation Counsel and the Commissioner 
of Highways, who had it within their power to stop 
the work instantly, took no steps to intervene. Indeed, 
throughout the Mayor acted as though he were attor- 
ney for the company against the city, even insulting the 
people’s representatives who appeared before him. In 
Albany the people’s bill remained in committee, which 
was also considering amendments presented by the 


Demonstration at Albany 213 


corporations to take out its fangs. It was announced 
that the Senate Railroad Committee would consider 
and report the bill on Wednesday the oth. Then, 
at the suggestion of Mr. Louis A. Lehmaier, a public 
demonstration of a new sort was undertaken. Up 
to this time the people had protested through the press 
and in mass meetings, sometimes three or four being 
held simultaneously in the churches and halls along 
Amsterdam Avenue, or even in other parts of the city, 
for the whole city was now beginning to take part in 
the fight. Now it was resolved to hold a great mass 
meeting in the capitol at Albany itself. Notice was 
given through the press and at meetings that on March 
oth a delegation of the people would go to Albany 
to demand action on the bill. Almost 1100 people 
took part in that demonstration—representatives of all 
the political clubs on the West Side, of the School 
Board, and individually of a number of public and 
private schools, of all the colleges, churches, and insti- 
tutions, and of a number of trades and organizations. 
It was by all odds the most imposing demonstration 
of the sort ever made, and represented every class 
and interest on the West Side, in addition to many rep- 
resentatives from other parts of the city. Those who 
had organized the demonstration arranged it in proces- 
sion at Albany, and 1100 angry New Yorkers, headed 
by the rectors of the Church of the Holy Name and St. 
Michael’s, arm in arm, marched from the railroad sta- 
tion to the capitol. When the head of that procession 
had reached the top of the capitol steps, the tail 
of the procession had not yet left the station. The 
Railroad Committee of the Senate took occasion to as- 
sert its disdain of such popular demonstrations by 
choosing this opportunity to present an amendment. 


214 Annals of St. Michael’s 


to the bill, drawn in the interest of the Third Avenue 
Railroad Company and brought to Albany by the 
Tammany leader. But before the delegation reached 
New York on its return, a telegram delivered on board 
the train showed that the Senate would not stand by 
its committee, and the following day the Assembly 
passed the people’s bill. Still there was delay, and the 
usual legislative tricks of amendments and references. 
On Saturday, March rath, the following letter was 
addressed to all the clergy of New York without regard 
to denomination, and it was estimated that on Sunday 
the 13th the rectors and pastors of no less than a hun- 
dred churches throughout the city read this letter to 
their people and urged and advocated active support 
of the committee in charge of the Amsterdam Avenue 
fight: 


AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. 


Satisfied with the knowledge that the combating of evil 
is as much a part of religion as the encouragement of good- 
ness, and inasmuch as a crime is about to be committed that 
will endanger the lives of the children in our neighborhood, 
we call on all ministers as the servants of Him who has said, 
“Suffer the little children to come unto me,” to unite with 
us in arousing the citizens of New York to the grave danger 
which menaces their children, wives, and parents, their 
liberty, their rights, and their property, and ask them to 
espouse in their pulpits the cause of the people fighting to 
save Amsterdam Avenue from such an engine of destruc- 
tion as four trolley tracks would be. 

In preventing this outrage on Amsterdam Avenue they 
are also preventing the establishment of a precedent which, 
if created, may some day result in their suffering from 
the danger against which we would guard our loved ones. 

We, therefore, ask them to make our cause their cause. 
There is to be a mass meeting of citizens held on Monday 


Appeal to the Clergy 215 


night at Durland’s Riding Academy, Fifty-ninth Street and 
the Boulevard, to protest against the abrogation of the 
rights of citizens to use their streets as best suits their con- 
venience, and we entreat all clergymen to urge their con- 
gregations to attend, and if not able to attend to write to 
their respective senators and members of Assémbly asking 
them to vote for the Ford bill without amendments. 
Yours respectfully, 
Rev. JAmMEs M. GALLican, 
Catholic Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. 
Rev. JoHn P. PETERS, 
St. Michael’s Protestant Episcopal Church. 


The next night a great mass meeting was held at Dur- 
land’s Riding Academy, one of the largest meetings of 
the sort ever held in New York. The presiding officer, 
John Harsen Rhoades, and the speakers were conser- 
vative business men and lawyers. The deep indig- 
nation of the people against the railroad companies 
was manifested in the utterances of the presiding 
officer and the other conservative business men with 
him, which were radical and almost inflammatory; 
and when Mr. Rhoades suggested that in order to con- 
trol the railroads it might be necessary to resort to 
municipal ownership, the whole vast audience, of 
the most eminently respectable type, cheered up- 
roariously. The people were ready for anything 
against the railroads. By this time the leaders of both 
parties realized the seriousness of the situation, and 
that officially neither party could afford to antagonize 
the popular will so definitely expressed. On the follow- 
ing Sunday, March 2oth, Senator Ford and Assembly- 
man Fallows came to the rectory from a conference 
with the acting leader of the Republican party to ask 
the rector of St. Michael’s Church to hold a confer- 
ence with him, with regard to the proposed legislation. 


216 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Friendly influences had been at work with the leader 
of the Republican party, Senator Platt, then absent 
in Florida, who had sent his commands to the party 
managers to support the people’s measure. He was 
at the moment himself hastening back to take charge 
of the situation. At the conference which ensued the 
Republican leader was frank to say that although the 
Republicans commanded a majority in the Legislature 
they were unable to control that majority in legisla- 
tion adverse to the corporation interests, and he ac- 
cordingly advised a conference with Mr. Croker, as the 
head of Tammany Hall, and arranged the same for 
that afternoon at the Democratic Club. At that con- 
ference Mr. Croker expressed himself as entirely in 
sympathy with the wishes of the people and explained 
with brutal frankness the relation of the railway com- 
panies to the two political parties in the city and State, 
and their great power in those parties. He offered 
to present to the Executive Committee of Tammany 
Hall a proposition to instruct the Democratic mem- 
bers of the Legislature from New York city to vote 
for the measure to protect Amsterdam Avenue, advo- 
cated by the people’s committee, either in its present 
form or with such amendments as that committee 
might see fit to adopt later. Mr. Croker was frank to 
say that, while he believed Tammany Hall could control 
all its own members, the money of the corporations 
and other influences would undoubtedly be used against 
the bill, and there was no power which under such cir- 
cumstances could control the up-State legislators. The 
next day, Monday, the Tammany Executive Committee 
passed the vote which Mr. Croker had suggested, and 
from that time onward the solid vote of the Tammany 
delegation was cast for the people’s measure, with only 


Money at Albany 27 


such amendments or changes as the people’s com- 
mittee itself proposed or formally accepted. 

At the outset of the fight the two street railroad 
companies had stood together against the public in- 
terest, but now the Metropolitan abandoned its com- 
rade and joined the popular side. A conference was 
held at Mr. Sterne’s office between the legal repre- 
sentatives of the two companies and the representa- 
tives of the people; and the Metropolitan Railway, 
through its representatives, withdrew its opposition 
to and expressed its approval of the people’s bill. 
All the more desperately the Third Avenue Company, 
which would be the immediate loser by the passage 
of the people’s bill, fought at Albany. The leader 
of the Tammany delegation telephoned down that the 
representative of the Third Avenue Railroad was in 
Albany “with half a million in his pocket” and that 
it was “hard to hold the boys.”’ To the honor of Tam- 
many discipline, however, be it said that not one man 
failed to obey orders. Finally Governor Roosevelt 
took a hand in the fight in behalf of the people, but at 
the same time insisted upon an amendment, to let the 
Third Avenue Company down easy, which in the judg- 
ment of the committee might raise a question of consti- 
tutionality about the bill. However, this seemed to be 
the best that could be done, and so with this change 
the people’s bill, practically prohibiting four tracks 
of electric street railway on Amsterdam Avenue, was 
finally passed by the unanimous vote of both houses 
of the Legislature on April roth, approved by the Mayor, 
no one appearing against it, and signed by the Gover- 
nor April 20, 1899. 

While the Tammany delegation at Albany had voted 
with the people, the Tammany administration in New 


218 Annals of St. Michael’s 


York city stood by the railroad company. In spite 
of Judge Scott’s decision the Corporation Counsel 
would not bring suit to restrain or oust the company, 
the Commissioner of Highways would not revoke the 
street opening permit, and the Third Avenue Railroad 
still continued the work of construction of an electric 
subway. Finally the rector of this church called on 
Mr. Croker at 111 Broadway on behalf of the people’s 
Committee and called his attention to the fact that, in 
the first place, it had been from the outset in the power 
of the Tammany city administration to stop the work 
of the Third Avenue Railroad Company had it so de- 
sired; and that, in the second place, the continuance 
of that work in the face of the legislation obtained in 
Albany, and the professions of Tammany Hall that it 
would support the people’s Committee in its efforts 
to protect Amsterdam Avenue, must inevitably make 
it appear that it was playing a crooked game. The 
facts in the case laid before him, Mr. Croker appre- 
ciated the truth of the statement, and, the Corporation 
Counsel entering at that moment, demanded of him 
what was meant by such action. The Corporation 
Counsel laid the blame on the Commissioner of High- 
ways, who was summoned by telephone and somewhat 
peremptorily advised of his duty and his opportunity, 
and within the hour the permit was withdrawn and 
the work of construction stopped. So ended one phase 
of a very remarkable struggle, which had taught the 
people of New York their own power, and shown, 
furthermore, the influence which the Christian Church 
possesses in this city, when it will use its influence in 
behalf of the real interests of the people. 

But the fight to rid Amsterdam Avenue of its four 
tracks was not finished until this present centenary 


Sneak Bills 219 


year. One result of its two years’ fight against the 
people was the practical bankruptcy of the Third 
Avenue Railway Co., which was forthwith absorbed 
by the Metropolitan, so that the surface lines of the 
entire city west of the East River were in the hands 
of one company. Then commenced a fight to secure 
by indirection what had been directly prohibited by 
law. Year after year sneak .bills were introduced at 
Albany which, under the guise of a railroad franchise 
in some other part of the State, or permission to lay 
tracks on some other street, contained provisions 
which would have nullified the anti-four-track legis- 
lation of 1899. It was a very sad and humiliating 
spectacle. Directors who counted themselves respec- 
table men, some of them members of Christian churches, 
and lawyers of capacity, who ranked high in their 
profession, combined to rob the public under the guise 
of law. The streets which had been seized by the 
company without payment or warrant of law were 
now made theirs by acts of Legislature, defective char- 
ters were mended up and new charters given free. 
Incessant vigilance was needed to protect Amsterdam 
Avenue. The Independent Club, the West End Asso- 
ciation, the Riverside and Morningside Heights Asso- 
ciation, the Republican and Democratic Clubs, the 
Transit Reform Committee of One Hundred, and other 
organizations maintained committees which were 
ready to be called together for action at a moment’s 
notice, either to go to Albany to oppose bills, or, if 
necessary, to organize mass meetings. 

The last of such mass meeting was held in St. Michael’s 
Parish House in 1905. A sneak bill had passed the 
committee and reached third reading in the house. A 
representation of the West Side committees called 


220 Annals of St. Michael’s 


on the Mayor to act for the city in opposing the bill. 
His attitude was unfriendly. Instantly a mass meet- 
ing was called, and by the time it convened a despatch 
was in hand from the Mayor arraying the city against 
the bill. At Albany the city representatives of both 
parties (the bill had been introduced by the railroad’s 
up-State agents) acted with such promptitude and 
effectiveness that its promoters suffered an ignominous 
defeat on the floor of the House. 

In 1902, the outer tracks on Amsterdam Avenue be- 
ing now practically unused and constituting a nuisance 
as well as a continued menace, the Borough President 
Mr. Cantor, notified the company to tear up the tracks 
within thirty days, or otherwise he would tear them 
up at their expense. The railroad company secured 
an injunction, and for some years the matter was 
fought back and forth in the courts. The city author- 
ities did not display any very great zeal in the case, 
however, and the matter was kept alive at all largely 
through the persistency of Mr. Charles De Hart Brower, 
chairman of the Amsterdam Avenue Committee of the 
Independent Club. Finally, in 1906, the Attorney- 
General of the State gave Mr. Brower permission to bring 
suit for the annulment of the charter of the Forty- 
Second Street, Manhattanville, and St. Nicholas Railroad 
Company on Amsterdam Avenue, and Mr. A. Walker 
Otis, chairman of the similar committee of the West 
End Association, was appointed Deputy Attorney- 
General for the prosecution of the suit. The company 
then offered to remove its tracks if the suit for 
annulment were not pressed, and in June of this year 
an order of the court was issued for the removal of the 
tracks and the restoration of the avenue to its former 
condition. So in this our centenary year, after a 


Transit Reform Committee 221 


fight extending over sixteen years, the people have at 
last won the victory. 

To make the story complete it should be added that 
the Ford Franchise Tax bill, also passed in 1899, 
was originally introduced as a part of the Amsterdam 
Avenue fight. It was originally proposed as a sort of 
flank movement, no one at the time supposing that 
such a measure could be passed in one session of the 
Legislature, if at all. Ford took the bill and made it 
his own, but he was able to carry it through only be- 
cause of the tremendous popular sentiment aroused 
by the Amsterdam Avenue fight. So a measure of 
State and national importance was an indirect outcome 
of a fight for local relief. 

Another measure of almost equal importance may 
be traced to the same struggle. As the result of the 
Amsterdam Avenue fight the Independent Club, 
with which it had begun, maintained a constant watch 
on street railroad conditions. In 1903 the wretched 
transit conditions then prevailing and the absolutely 
indecent overcrowding on both the elevated and sur- 
face railroads led to the appointment of a new com- 
mittee and the commencement of a new fight. This 
committee, of which Mr. J. H. Cohen was chairman, 
called a mass meeting in St. Michael’s Parish House 
to protest against the existing conditions, which meet- 
ing resulted in the formation of the Transit Reform 
Committee of One Hundred. It was through the work 
of the legal committee of this committee that the 
railroads were compelled to give the transfers called for 
by law, but theretofore refused by them. The efforts 
of this. committee to find out the law governing the 
railroads, the actual terms of their charters, and their 
obligations toward the public revealed such a hope- 


222 Annals of St. Michael’s 


less condition of incapacity on the part of the State 
Railroad Commission to cope with the situation, that 
this committee found itself obliged to take the lead 
in an endeavor to secure legislation which should 
remedy these conditions by creating a competent and 
efficient railroad commission for New York city. A 
bill to create such a commission was introduced in the 
Legislature year after year, and opposed by the railroads 
and the political “machine.” Finally last winter 
Governor Hughes took up the measure which his fel- 
low citizens of the West Side had so long championed, 
modified it and broadened its scope, and brought to a 
successful issue the work which they had undertaken 
to perform. So in this our centenary year the Am- 
sterdam Avenue fight may be said to have had its com- 
plete fruition. This whole episode has been treated 
at some length because of its intrinsic interest and its 
importance both in the history of the neighborhood 
and in the history of the church itself. 

It is difficult to describe the work of the parish with- 
out seeming to emphasize unduly the part played in 
that work by the rector. It is in fact the work of 
many men and women which has made St. Michael’s 
parish what it is to-day. Many souls striving together, 
many acts of daily sacrifice, much service of many 
whose names are never known except to one or two, 
many little things done by many men, women, and 
children have built the real church of St. Michael 
of which, this outward church is but a symbol,—but 
these are things which can be told in no book, and yet 
with them untold less than half the story of the parish 
has been written. 

In concluding this chapter, which covers the period 
of my own rectorship, I can only lay before my readers 


YIOHOD S.TSVHOIW “LS 


A Hundred Years’ Growth 223 


dry and bare comparisons to show how the church has 
grown in the hundred years of its history. In 1807 and 
for many years thereafter there were but twenty or 
thirty communicants at the outside; there were five or 
six baptisms, marriages, and burials, and ordinarily no 
confirmations, in a year. The church could support 
but half a rector, and that only if Trinity would pay 
the better part of his salary. A hundred years ago 
St. Michael’s was a mere chapel of ease for a few well- 
to-do summer residents, with a plain and cheap wooden 
building seating perhaps 200 people. To-day St. 
Michael’s is a great church of the people in the midst of 
a crowded portion of the city, with a handsome church 
building of stone, seating 1600, and a large and well- 
equipped parish house, not a few of the rooms in 
which would seat as many people as did the first church. 

There are 1711 communicants on our roll, an increase 
of almost 100 within the year; for with the continued 
increase of population the church is still steadily grow- 
ing. These 1711 names, it should be said, represent 
actual communicants, those who have received the 
communion during the year, although that number 
has never received communion together at one time. 
The largest number receiving communion on one day, 
Easter, 1907, was 1190, and during the week following 
339 more received that blessed sacrament. Our mem- 
bership of baptized persons is 4812; 125 baptisms were 
recorded in the year past, of which 23 were adults; 
99 persons were confirmed, 84 couples married, and 
133 persons buried. Our Sunday School now numbers 
742 scholars, of whom about 600 belong to the parish 
proper, the remainder to The Sheltering Arms, and 74 
teachers. 

Our budget for the year, as reported to the 


ms Annals of St. Michael’s 


Diocesan Convention, represents a total expenditure 
of $35,278.18, of which $24,700.62 was spent on 
the current expenses of the parish, including all 
salaries, fuel, etc., both for the Parish House and the 
church; $2327.50 was spent in providing for the poor 
in the parish and neighborhood; $556.10 for the Sunday 
School; $1545 for repairs and improvements of various 
descriptions in church and Parish House; and $2405.57 
for other objects within the parish, that is for work 
in the gymnasium, guilds, and the like. For diocesan 
work, including the City Mission Society, the Arch- 
deaconry, the Mission to Seamen, and various diocesan 
charitable objects, $1008.53 was contributed. For 
work without the Diocese, principally the mission work 
of the Church at home and abroad, the amount of our 
contributions has been $2734.86. The total amount 
raised by the congregation was $17,736.94, of which 
$11,666.05 was for ourselves and $6070.89 for others, 
as represented by missions, charity, and various benevo- 
lences. A comparison of the totals of receipts and 
disbursements will show to what extent the church is 
dependent for the support of its work upon the en- 
dowment, and to what extent upon the voluntary con- 
tributions of its members. 


MoyO Teads pu jooyos Aepung 
G1IND VITIOS9 “LS 


PART II 


Pes OR THE RECTORS OF SI. 
MIGHAEL'S CHURCH 


REV. JOHN VANDERBILT BARTOW, 
First Rector, 1808-1810 


CHAPTER VIII 


FIRST RECTOR 
Rev. JoHN VANDERBILT Bartow 


1808-1810 


EV. JOHN VANDERBILT BARTOW, born in 
R New Rochelle on October 17, 1787, was the 
sixth son of the Rev. Theodosius Bartow, known 
as “Parson Bartow,” of New Rochelle, and the grand- 
son of the Rev. John Bartow, who came to this country 
from England asa missionary for the Society of the Pro- 
pagation of the Gospel. Inthe Journal of the First Con- 
vention of the Diocese of New York, June 27, 1787, 
Theodosius Bartow appears as a lay-delegate represent- 
ing New Rochelle, which parish he continued to repre- 
sent for a number of years. In the Diocesan Journal of 
1799 mention is made of the fact that he had regularly 
officiated as lay-reader at New Rochelle for five years, 
and he is recommended to the Bishop for Holy Orders. 
The following year, 1790, he appears as rector at New 
Rochelle and continues rector until 1819. 

His son, John Vanderbilt, was graduated at Columbia. 
College in this city in 1806, and studied for the ministry 
under the direction of Bishop Moore, then Bishop of the 
Diocese. He was ordained deacon in the following 
year, at a special ordination held in St. George’s Chapel,. 

227 


228 Annals of St. Michael’s 


New York, December 13, 1807, and priest three years 
later, November 2, 1810. He was called to the charge 
of St. Michael’s Church on May 16, 1808, and resigned 
his charge on August 27, 1810. 

Being deacon during the whole period of his incum- 
bency at St. Michael’s, he does not appear as rector of 
that church in the Convention Journal and was not 
entitled to a seat in Convention. 

Minutes of his official acts in his own hand-writing on 
loose sheets of paper, bound together by his successor, 
are in the possession of the parish, no regular parish 
register having been opened at that time. These records 
commence almost immediately after his ordination as 
deacon and continue during the period of his incum- 
bency. They include baptisms, marriages, etc., per- 
formed not only at St. Michael’s Church, but in Trinity 
Church and its various chapels, St. Stephen’s and 
Zion churches, in New Rochelle and in Savannah, Ga. 
Some of them are rather interesting as revealing con- 
ditions at that period. The first baptism recorded, 
December 20, 1807, is that of “John Farr, aged ten 
years, supposed to be at the point of death, a poor 
widow’s son, William Street, New York.” There was 
slavery in those days, as is shown by such entries as 
this: “Saturday night, April 12, 1817, at New Rochelle, 
John Thompson, a black man of my father’s, to Mrs. 
Thompson, a widow, black.” The most curious en- 
try,‘ however, is the following: “Saturday afternoon, 
August 17, 1809, attended the funeral of Mr. Stouten- 
burgh from the corner of Lombard and Cedar Streets, 
to Trinity Church, but refused to read the service, as 
he was found drowned and supposed to have committed 
suicide. Aged fifty-six.’’ In connection with the no- 
tices of weddings, Mr. Bartow has added a memorandum 


Bartow Descendants 229 


of fees given, which vary from $1 to $5; while at burials 
it was the custom to give to the clergyman a scarf and 
a pair of gloves. 

Two years after leaving St. Michael’s Church, in 1812, 
Mr. Bartow became rector of Christ Church, Savannah, 
Ga. In 1815 he accepted the rectorship of Trinity 
Church, Baltimore, Md., where he remained until his 
death, July 14, 1836, at Perth Amboy, N. J.; in the 
churchyard of St. Peter’s Church at which place he is 
buried. 

He was married by his father in 1811 to Matilda 
Wilson, daughter of Archibald and Phcebe Helms 
Stewart, by whom he had three sons and four daughters. 
Several of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren 
are now living in Montclair and Englewood, N. J., and 
in Baltimore, Md., and one granddaughter lives in 
Germany. 


CHAPTER IX 


SECOND RECTOR 
Rev. SAMUEL FARMAR JARVIS 
1810-1820 


EV. SAMUEL FARMAR JARVIS was the son of 
R Rev. Abraham Jarvis, D.D. (later the second 
Bishop of Connecticut), and Ann Farmar of 
New York. He was born at Middletown, Conn., where 
his father was first rector of Christ Church, and 
studied at Yale College, from which he graduated in 
1805. He was ordained deacon on Sunday, March 18, 
A.D. 1810, by his father, the Rt. Rev. Abraham Jarvis, 
D.D., Bishop of Connecticut, in Trinity Church, New 
Haven, and priest in the same church by the same 
bishop on Friday, April 5, 1811. 

On Saturday, November 17, 1810, the Vestry of St. 
Michael’s Church, Bloomingdale, chose him to be their 
minister, or, in the event of his obtaining priest’s orders, 
their rector. He accepted the invitation on March 22, 
1811, and took charge of the cure in April of the same 
year. 

Dr. Jarvis’s scholarly character and accurate methods 
are illustrated in the register of St. Michael’s Church. 
From the loose sheets which Mr. Bartow had left he 
abstracted all the records dealing directly with St. 
Michael’s Church and entered them very carefully in 

230 


REV. SAMUEL FARMAR JARVIS, 0.D. 


Second Rector, 1810-1820 


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Faithful Records 231 


a book provided for the purpose, appending this certifi- 
cate: ‘‘The above record I certify to be a true copy 
from several loose papers found by me in the secretary’s 
register of the parish of vestry meetings of St. Michael’s 
Church, Bloomingdale. Samuel Farmar Jarvis, Rec- 
tor.” His devout Churchmanship makes itself mani- 
fest in the invocation which he prefixes to the record of 
his own entries: 


In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, I, 
Samuel Farmar Jarvis, do promise that every page of the 
following book subscribed by my name shall contain as true 
and faithful a record as I shall be able to make, without any 
willful addition, alteration or omission, of all the baptisms, 
marriages and burials which shall be celebrated in this 
parish by me during the course of my ministry in the same, 
so help me God: through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


Dr. Jarvis’s portion of the records of St. Michael’s 
parish is a credit to any parish and any rector— 
accurately kept, written in a careful and legible hand, 
with very few erasures or corrections. 

St. Michael’s parish was in Dr. Jarvis’s time, a small 
country parish designed principally for the convenience 
of persons who resided in their country seats in the 
neighborhood of the church during the summer, and at 
the outset Dr. Jarvis lived in the city, at 490 Broadway. 
Later a residence was provided for him in the neigh- 
borhood of the church, and mention is made of hiring 
the Striker house for that purpose. This was after he 
had become rector also of St. James’s Church, Hamilton 


Square (Lexington Avenue and 69th Street). 
As will appear from the history of the parish, Dr. 


Jarvis interested himself in educational matters, and 
under his rectorship free day schools were established 
for poor people in connection with both St. Michael’s 


232 Annals of St. Michael’s 


and St. James’s churches. These schools were designed 
for the poor people of the neighborhood, not for the 
children of the well-to-do. Dr. Jarvis’s interest in 
improving the condition of the poor is attested further 
by the fact that during the last year of his rectorship, 
1819, he commenced holding services in the two spots 
on the upper west side of the city where there were at 
that period small villages containing a population of 
poor people, namely, Manhattanville and Fort Wash- 
ington. In September, 1817, Dr. Berrian, Rector of 
Trinity Church, was granted a leave of absence, and 
Dr. Jarvis of St. Michael’s and St. James’s and Mr. 
Johnston of Newtown were engaged to officiate in that 
parish on Sunday afternoons for six months during his 
absence. In 1818 and again in 1819 Dr. Jarvis was 
elected a member of the Standing Committee of the 
Diocese. In 1817 began the agitation for the establish- 
ment of a Theological Seminary for the instruction of 
young men for the ministry, and in 1818 Dr. Jarvis was 
given a leave of absence for a period in order to devote 
himself to collecting money for the seminary. 

On May 22, 1819, Dr. Jarvis resigned the rectorship 
of St. Michael’s and St. James’s to accept a professor- 
ship of Biblical Learning in the new General Theological 
Seminary, a position which he did not long retain, 
however, owing apparently to the controversy between 
the general Church and the Diocese of New York as to 
the control of that seminary. During the entire period 
of his connection with the seminary he continued to 
act as rector of St. Michael’s and St. James’s, not finally 
severing his relations with these churches until the 
end of June, 1820. In the same year he became rector 
of St. Paul’s Church, Boston, a position which he con- 
tinued to hold until 1826. From 1826 to 1835 he 


Dr. Jarvis’s Family 233 


travelled in Europe. On his return from his travels 
he was made professor of Oriental Literature in Wash- 
ington College, now Trinity, Hartford, Conn., but two 
years later he resigned this position to accept the 
rectorship of Christ Church, Middletown, of which his 
father had been rector at the time of his birth, a charge 
which he filled until 1842. In 1819 the University of 
Pennsylvania gave him the degree of D.D., and in 1837 
Washington College (Trinity), Hartford, gave him the 
degree of LL.D. He was regarded at that time as one 
of the most distinguished scholars of the Church, and 
the General Convention of 1838 appointed him histori- 
ographer of the Church. Inconnection with this office 
he planned a great work of Church history, only one 
volume of which was ever published, namely, A Chrono- 
logical Introduction to the History of the Church, 1845. 

He married Sarah McCurdy Hart of Saybrook, 
Conn., and in the records of this parish there is mention 
of the births of three children: John Abraham, 1814; 
Jeannette Hart, 1815; and Ann Christian, 1819; and the 
death in Europe of the eldest of these children, John 
Abraham, in 1834. The remains of this son were in- 
terred in St. Michael’s Churchyard and lie beneath the 
present church building. One of Dr. Jarvis’s sons, 
born at a later date, the Rev. Samuel Farmar Jarvis, 
D.D., is at the present time Rector Emeritus of Christ: 
Church, Brooklyn, Conn., opposite Middletown, where 
his grandfather and father served before him. 

Dr. Jarvis died on March 26, 1851. How highly he 
was esteemed by the parish of which he was once 
rector is shown by the fact that, on receipt of the news 
of his death, more than thirty years after the date of 
the severance of his relations with this parish, a special 
meeting of the Vestry was called on March 28, 1851, to 
pass resolutions of bereavement. 


va 


CHAPTER X 


THIRD RECTOR 
Rev. WILLIAM RICHMOND 


1820-1837, 1842-1858 


ILLIAM RICHMOND was of an old New 
V/ V/ England family, of which John Richmond 
({1664), originally of Ashton Keynes, Wilt- 
shire, England, who came to this country about 1635, 
was the American progenitor. His son, Captain Ed- 
ward Richmond (f 1696), General Solicitor (1667-72) 
and Attorney General of the colony (1677-80), acquired 
a farm at Little Compton, Rhode Island, including 
within its limits Treaty Rock, where Colonel Benjamin 
Church made the treaty with the queen sachem of the 
Saconets, Awashonks, which broke up the power of 
King Philip of Mount Haup. This is the Richmond 
homestead. Here Edward Richmond was buried, and 
his farm has remained in the family up to the present 
time, through seven generations of descendants, serving 
its later owners as a place of rest and temporary retire- 
ment from the toil and tumult of their life work. 
William Richmond, grandson of Colonel Silvester 
Richmond and son of William Richmond (1770-1850) 
and Clarissa Andrews, his wife, was born at Dighton, 
Mass., on Dec. 11, 1797. His parents were Congrega- 
234 


REV. WILLIAM RICHMOND 
Third Rector, 1820-1837, 1842-1858 


Richmond’s Conversion 235 


tionalists and apparently belonged to that wing of the 
Congregationalists who either did not believe in infant 
baptism or at least were not strenuous with regard to 
it. He was educated at Brown College in Providence, 
and after graduation went to Schenectady, N. Y., where 
he began the study of the law. Here he was converted, 
if we may apply that term to the conscious awakening 
of the Christian spirit within him, and baptized at St. 
George’s Church, March 31, 1816, by the Rev. Cyrus 
Stebbins; Thomas C. Brownell, afterwards Bishop 
of Connecticut, and Samuel Johnstone acting as his 
witnesses. Later his whole family felt the influence 
of this action, through which most of them were finally 
brought into the membership of the Church. He him- 
self baptized three of his sisters and one brother, 
together with various of his Rhode Island and Massa- 
chusetts kinsfolk—Richmond, Tulinghast, Pitman, 
Whitmarsh—and recorded their baptisms in the register 
of St. Michael’s Church, during his ministry there. 
Richmond’s conversion meant, however, far more than 
baptism and the acceptance of Christianity as the rule 
of life. He was filled with a great zeal to preach the 
Gospel, especially to the poor, the outcast, the ignorant, 
and the unbelieving, and among his earliest papers is a 
record of his desire to give his days to a frontier mis- 
sionary life. He at once commenced to study for the 
ministry, and in the Convention report of 1817 appears 
as a candidate for orders. He was ordained deacon by 
Bishop Hobart in Grace Church, New York, December 
21, 1818, and at once removed to the Diocese of Penn- 
sylvania, where for eighteen months he was engaged 
in missionary work in the service of the Society for 
the Advancement of Christianity, partly in the new 
State of Ohio and in Western Pennsylvania, about 


236 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Pittsburg, where he was for a time minister of Trinity 
Church, and partly in and about Philadelphia. 

In 1817, William Hamilton, Esq., of Hamiltonville, 
now part of West Philadelphia, had deeded four fifty 
foot lots for a church. Knowledge of this finally com- 
ing to the Society for the Advancement of Christianity 
in Pennsylvania stimulated that Society to undertake 
a work of church extension in Philadelphia, which is 
thus recorded in the Society’s report for the year 1819: 


The Trustees having ascertained that there were a con- 
siderable number of the members of our church residing in 
the immediate vicinity of Philadelphia, who were anxious 
for the enjoyment of public worship, thought that, by some 
attention on their part, congregations might be established, 
and churches erected in the suburbs of the city, and in 
one or more of those pleasant villages which are situated 
on the banks of the Schuylkill. An appropriation was 
therefore made for a domestic mission. Information having 
been conveyed to those for whose benefit this appointment 
was intended, they entered into the plan with much earnest- 
ness and zeal, and provided places for the celebration of 
Divine Service. . . . At Hamiltonville Divine Service 
was held on every other Sunday morning, from the begin- 
ning of May to the 7th of November, and on every Sunday 
morning from November 7th to December rst, in a school- 
house, where a respectable and pretty numerous congrega- 
tion usually assembled. And there were a number of 
Episcopal families, some of whom came from Mantua and 
the surrounding country. 


The Rev. William Richmond was placed in charge of 
this mission, officiating in the district of Southwark, 
at the Falls of Schuylkill and at Hamiltonville. Out 
of the work at the latter place grew later St. Mary’s 
Church, now one of the strong parishes of Philadelphia. 


Richmond's Marriage 237 


On May 24, 1820, Mr. Richmond was called by joint 
action of the vestries of St. Michael’s and St. James’s to 
become minister of the two churches, or, in the event 
of his receiving ordination as priest, to become their 
rector. His acceptance of the call is dated June 3, 
1820, and he began his work at Bloomingdale with the 
close of that month, although he did not technically 
become rector until he was priested by Bishop Ho- 
bart in St. Michael’s Church, December 21, 1821. 
From the outset his relation to his parishioners seems 
to have been most cordial. He was a man of attrac- 
tive personality, a good but not a great preacher, and 
an admirable pastor, sympathetic and affectionate, 
one who made no enemies and who was beloved by 
all to whom he ministered. 

In the vestry records of St. James’s Church, under 
date of May 15, 1823, there is an entry which throws 
some light on Mr. Richmond’s domestic relations, to the 
effect that the vestry, being notified of an increase of 
$150 in the rector’s salary on the part of St. Michael’s 
Church, with the suggestion that St. James’s Church 
should increase the salary to the same amount, votes 
not to comply with this request, but to grant a “‘ gratuity 
of $100 to be given on the day of the rector’s wedding.”’ 
In fact he married in that summer Christiana Beckham 
of Philadelphia. But his life with her was brief. She 
died of consumption at her parents’ home in Phila- 
delphia a year later, August 20, 1824, aged twenty-two 
years and six months. A few years afterwards Mr. 
Richmond married a second time, Sarah Clarkson, 
the youngest daughter of General Matthew Clarkson of 
Revolutionary fame, one of the leading citizens of New 
York, a marriage which brought him into connection 
with all the older New York families who at that time 


238 Annals of St. Michael’s 


owned country seats in Bloomingdale and the surround- 
ing neighborhood. 

At the very outset of his ministry Mr. Richmond 
commenced an aggressive work of Church extension. 
He regarded the whole of the upper part of the island, 
from below s9th Street northward, as his parish, in 
which it was his duty to establish the church. Dr. 
Jarvis had already, in 1819, begun some sort of occa- 
sional services at Fort Washington, in which region 
there was a settlement of very poor people. In the 
church register there is a record of thirteen “children 
baptized in the School House at Fort Washington at 
a lecture, January 17, 1819, P.M., Second Sunday 
after Epiphany.” Mr. Richmond took up the work 
thus begun. Ona scrap of paper in his handwriting, 
now in my possession, he states that the first record 
which he can find of his services at Fort Washington 
was on November 26, 1820, at Mr. Morse’s house. 
These services were continued for many years in the 
school-house, at Fort Washington, and out of them 
grew St. Ann’s Church, as recorded elsewhere in this 
volume. On November 26, 1820, Mr. Richmond also 
conducted his first service in Manhattanville. In 1819 
Ur. Jarvis had begun holding occasional services there. 
Mr. Richmond took up his work, with a view to the 
ultimate organization of a church, and on Thanksgiving 
Day, December 1 8, 1823, a church was organized under 
the State law with the title “The Rector, Church 
Wardens and Vestrymen of St. Mary’s Church, Man- 
hattanville, Ninth Ward, of the City of New York.” 
Mr. Richmond was chosen rector and continued to 
fill that office, with brief intermissions, until 1853. Dur- 
ing the greater portion of this period he received a 
nominal salary of $300 a year, which was never paid, 


Founding Churches 239 


and which he ultimately donated, with other sums 
for which the parish had become indebted to him, total- 
ing over $7000, to the parish. 

On the east side of what is now Central Park and 
within the parochial limits of St. James’s, Hamilton 
Square, of which Mr. Richmond was also rector, lay 
the village of Yorkville. York Hill was the name 
then applied to the hill on which stands the old reser- 
voirinthe Park. From this hill the neighboring village 
of Yorkville took its name. The people of this village, 
who were very poor, did not attend St. James’s Church, 
which was meant for the well-to-do occupants of the 
country residences in that neighborhood. If they were 
to have any church at all, it was manifest that the 
Church must go tothem. Accordingly, Mr. Richmond 
undertook special services among these people, begin- 
ning April 6, 1828, and continuing for many years. 
This ultimately resulted in the organization of a church, 
never incorporated and never admitted to union with 
the Diocese, St. Matthew’s, which at a later date was 
replaced by the Church of the Redeemer. 

Toward the end of the same year, 1828, Mr. Rich- 
mond extended his activities to Harlem. This was 
a village of considerable importance, founded at an 
early date and having a _ well-established Dutch 
Reformed Church. There were, however, not a few 
Episcopalians residing in Harlem, some for the summer 
and some all the year round. These found it diffi- 
cult and inconvenient to attend services at St. James’s 
or St. Michael’s. In 1828 Mr. Richmond engaged the 
Rev. G. L. Hinton as assistant minister to him in his 
capacity as rector of St. Mary’s Church, Manhattanville, 
with the understanding that Mr. Hinton’s special 
work should be to endeavor to organize a church in 


240 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Harlem. Through the courtesy of the trustees of the 
village academy, who were members of the Reformed 
Church, the use of that building was secured for the 
Episcopal services. The first service was held in this 
school-house on December 7, 1828, Mr. Richmond 
officiating, after which date the services were continued 
by the Rev. G. L. Hinton, acting as Mr. Richmond’s 
assistant. The success of this work was instant, and 
on the 14th of February, 1829, St. Andrew’s Church, 
Harlem, was duly organized and Mr. Hinton elected 
its first rector. 

In 1829 it seemed good to the Church in Convention 
assembled that some one of its bishops should visit the 
great western and southwestern territory, and at a 
meeting of the Board of Domestic and Foreign Missions, 
held August 29th, it was arranged that the Rt. Rev. 
T. C. Brownell, Bishop of Connecticut, should make a 
missionary trip through this country, the Rev. Frank 
L. Hawkes being appointed to accompany him. The 
latter, after his appointment, resigned and the Rev. 
William Richmond was appointed by the Executive 
Committee to take his place. Mr. Richmond was a 
family connection and a distant kinsman of Bishop 
Brownell, who, it will be remembered, stood as his 
godfather. The special work assigned to Mr. Rich- 
mond was to collect money for the mission work in 
the south and west and organize auxiliary missionary 
committees wherever he could do so. This missionary 
trip lasted about four months, from the middle of 
November, 1829, until the latter part of March, 1830. 
Going through Pennsylvania from Philadelphia to 
Pittsburg, they then descended the Ohio and the Missis- 
sippi to New Orleans, thence to Mobile by water and 
from Mobile overland through Alabama and the terri- 


A Missionary Journey 24 


tory of the Creek nation to the Atlantic States and so up 
through Savannah, Charleston, Richmond, and Wash- 
ington. Several churches were consecrated on this trip ; 
in some cases, as at Louisville, the money to pay off the 
debt being first collected by Mr. Richmond. Several 
clergy were ordained, confirmation was administered 
in a number of churches, in some States for the first 
time, and finally a convention of the clergy and lay dele- 
gates from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama was 
held to organize those States into a new diocese, the 
Southwestern Diocese. 

Bishop Brownell’s report of this trip was first pub- 
lished in the Spirit of Missions, something over twenty 
years later, in 1851. Mr. Richmond’s report, to which 
the Bishop refers, was never published, but a manuscript 
diary in his handwriting has been preserved, which con- 
tains much interesting information about the country 
visited, the state of the Church in the same, with inci- 
dental allusions to politics and prominent persons 
whom they met in every community. Mr. Richmond’s 
earlier missionary work in Western Pennsylvania and 
Ohio stood him in good stead on this trip. He was 
familiar with the ways of the country and had many 
acquaintances who were not only glad to see him again, 
but also to pass him on to others. 

While at Lexington they went out to visit the famous 
Henry Clay, who lived about a mile and a half from 
the town. Of this visit Mr. Richmond writes: 


Just such a house as you might expect him to reside 
in. Has about 20 negroes. Is supposed to have prop- 
erty. His sons, the elder, dissipated. He was out on his 
farm but soon came home. Received us politely. Talked 
a good deal about education. Considered it one advantage 
of the divisions among Christians that they are compelled 


242 Annals of St. Michael’s 


by emulation to found colleges, etc. This is the case with 
the Baptists. Said that he considered that there were some 
of the worst people morally and politically assembled in the 
city of New York. Told us his wife was an episcopalian, 
but that his father and most of his connexions were baptists. 
Mrs. C. had gone to the funeral of his mother, who died yes- 
terday. Said we should see his only daughter Mrs. Irwin 
at New Orleans; and that he hoped we might strengthen 
some religious impressions of her’s. I told him I was glad 
to hear him express himself in that manner. He said he 
was always glad when he heard any person was going to join 
any church. He valued religion for its practical influence. 
His conversation fluent, his manner good and affable. 
Upon the whole I was highly pleased. 


Life on the Ohio and Mississippi was primitive in 
those days. There was much gambling and drinking. 
Schools and churches did not always exist in the settle- 
ments, but on the whole the population which was set- 
tling those regions was of good stock. Mr. Richmond 
thus describes the appearance and contents of a hut in 
the State of Missouri, at one of the wood stations along 
the river: 


I examined the cabin more particularly. Although it 
did not look better externally than a New England hog pen 
of good size, yet there were two beds covered with white 
counterpanes, having curtains, etc. A shelf of books, 
History of America, Novels, etc., amounting to two hundred 
in all, I suppose; a certificate in a plain frame, of the first 
communion of the woman hung up, and other appearances 
of civilization. 


The Indians, both the remains of the Chickasaws and 
Choctaws, whom he met at various towns along the 
Mississippi, and the Creeks, through whose territory 


The City Mission Society 243 


he passed, presented, according to his account, a very 
miserable appearance. In North Carolina the mis- 
sionaries called on Bishop Ravenscroft, who was con- 
fined to his bed in his last illness. He “charged the 
Bishop against Foreign Missions” and “he charged me 
against my ‘own proud and partial opinions.’ ’’ His at- 
titude towards missions was one not uncommon in the 
Church at that time. Mr. Richmond spent some time 
in Washington, where he had a large acquaintance, in- 
cluding among others Daniel Webster and his family. 
He met and conversed with President Van Buren and 
other notables and officials of the government, attended 
a number of sessions of Senate and House, and talked 
with the party leaders. The trickery and unreality of 
the political life thus revealed to him, superficially at 
least, seems to have impressed him very unfavorably, 
and he writes: “I am more and more convinced that 
political life is detrimental to religion.” 

After his return to New York, in 1830, Mr. Richmond 
obtained a leave of absence of six months to go to 
Europe with a sick relative, but no record or notice of 
this journey, if he ever made it, has been preserved. 

In 1831 the Church in New York began to wake up to 
the fact that it was entirely or almost entirely the church 
of the rich, and the City Mission Society was organized 
with Rev. Dr. Wainwright, rector of Grace Church, as 
president of the Executive Committee, for the pur- 
pose of establishing free churches, or rather free chapels 
for the use of people of the middle class who did not 
find themselves at home in the parish churches of that 
day. Mr. Richmond does not seem to have been an 
active member of this society, but on his own account 
he commenced at the same date a work of similar char- 
acter. St.Mary’s Church, Manhattanville, of which he 


244 Annals of St. Michael’s 


was rector, was organized originally to provide for the 
needs of the poorer population in that village and was 
always different in character from the more aristo- 
cratic mother church, St. Michael’s. After the erection 
of the church building, in 1826, the pews were ordered 
to be rented, but evidently the returns from these 
rentals were very meagre, the only recorded receipts 
from that source being $53 in the year 1827. Now it 
was decided to abolish pew-rents altogether and turn 
St. Mary’s into a free church, differing from those which 
the City Mission Society proposed to establish in that 
it was an incorporated and self-governing church 
society, while they were really chapels, not incorporated 
nor self-governing. In the year 1831, accordingly, the 
pew-rents were abolished and St. Mary’s Church was 
made free, the first free church in New York city and 
apparently in this country. There are no records to 
show precisely what part Mr. Richmond played in this 
matter, but, judging from his general record of activity 
in establishing free churches, it may fairly be inferred 
that he was the prime mover in establishing this first of 
all free churches. 

In 1831 Mr. Richmond originated another movement 
which was later to become of very great importance 
in the Church’s life. The Bloomingdale Lunatic 
Asylum, a department of the New York Hospital, was 
built in Bloomingdale in the year 1821. Contemporary 
accounts describe it as the most completely equipped 
hospital for the insane in the world. But the know- 
ledge of the treatment of the insane was still very back- 
ward. The modern theory of treating diseases of the 
mind like other diseases, providing humanizing enter- 
tainments, social intercourse and the like for the insane 
had not yet been propounded, and in this country, 


GARRIT VAN HORNE HOUSE, MR. RICHMOND’S ‘* RECTORY ’”’ 


Rear View 


FRONT VIEW OF SAME AFTER OPENING OF BOULEVARD AND 94TH STREET 


Mission to Insane 245 


certainly, no one had, up to this time, undertaken to 
hold religious services in institutions for the insane. 
Bloomingdale Asylum lay in Mr. Richmond’s parish, 
and he was not willing that it should remain without 
the sphere of his ministrations. Apparently at his 
suggestion and instigation he was appointed chaplain, 
and began to hold religious services there, finally re- 
ceiving, in 1833, the official appointment of chaplain to 
the Asylum. ‘These services may be said to have been 
the germ of the Mission to Public Institutions in this city. 
In two of his Convention addresses Bishop Onderdonk, 
then Bishop of New York, refers to these services with 
great interest and high appreciation. Whenever he 
visited St. Michael’s parish for the purpose of admin- 
istering confirmation, Mr. Richmond took him out to 
see the Bloomingdale Asylum and to take part in the 
services. How novel they seemed at that day is clear 
from the Bishop’s description of them in his Convention 
addresses. 

As a result of the work of the City Mission Society 
already referred to, which had by that time established 
two or three free churches, in 1836 Bishop Onderdonk, 
in his Convention address and through the columns 
of the Churchman (June 1836) urged upon the clergy 
of New York action by the Church of New York as a 
whole and the establishment of further free churches 
for people of the middle class. This was something 
which appealed very strongly to Mr. Richmond. Ac- 
cordingly in 1836 he asked and obtained from the 
vestries of St. Michael’s, St. James’s, and St. Mary’s the 
appointment of his brother, the Rev. James Cook Rich- 
mond, as his assistant, with right of succession in case of 
his death or resignation, in order that he might be more 
free to devote himself to building up the Church among, 


246 | * Annals of St. Michael’s 


the middle and lower classes. With the approval of the 
Bishop Mr. Richmond undertook to form a free church 
at Euterpean Hall, 410 Broadway. According to the 
report presented to the Diocesan Convention of 1836, 
Rev. J. F. Fish, a deacon, officiated at this place in the 
morning and Mr. Richmond in the afternoon and even- 
ing. There were then seventy-six communicants, and 
a church was to be organized on lines set forth in the 
letter of the Bishop in the Churchman referred to 
above. The title given this new church, which was 
never, however, incorporated, was “The Episcopal 
Free Church of the Redemption.” 

At that time Zion Church contained within its paro- 
chial boundaries Five Points, then and until a much 
later period, the most vicious and miserable section of 
New York. For one cause or another Zion Church had 
lost a considerable portion of its supporting membership 
and was just entering upon that struggle for existence 
financially which was ultimately to result in the sale of 
the site and the removal of the parish to a more com- 
fortable neighborhood, less in need of the Gospel. It 
had been running down for some years, so that 
whereas in 1834 it reported 120 baptisms and 39 mar- 
riages, in 1837 it reported but 39 baptisms and 12 
marriages. But if, from the point of view of the self- 
supporting parish its position was becoming more 
difficult, from the point of view of the man interested in 
carrying the Gospel to the poor and needy, its position 
was singularly attractive. On the 21st of April, 1837, 
Rev. Thomas Breintnall, who had been rector since 1819, 
tendered his resignation. After some little delay, on 
August oth of that year Mr. Richmond was called as 
rector and accepted the call, with the agreement that 
the large galleries of the church should be entirely 


The Experiment at Zion 247 


free and that all the members of his newly organized 
“Free Church of the Redemption”’ should be invited 
to Zion Church, and should be given those seats. 

Zion now for a time became the centre of a very 
active missionary work. In the Diocesan Journal of 
1838 Mr. Richmond reports the organization of “The 
Society for the Promotion of Christianity, which has 
visited 1600 families and distributed $400 already in 
the 6th ward.’ Succeeding reports show a gradual 
falling off in this activity, which suggests that after the 
first enthusiasm missionary zeal was waning. Appar- 
ently Mr. Richmond had not felt altogether sure of the 
success of his experiment when he accepted the call to 
Zion, for he allowed himself to be continued as assistant 
minister at St. Michael’s, St. James’s, and St. Mary’s 
without salary, but with the provision that in case of 
James C. Richmond’s death or resignation, he should 
again succeed to the rectorship. 

In 1842 Mr. James C. Richmond became tired of 
parochial work and vacated the cures of St. Michael 
and St. James, and Mr. William Richmond was again 
called to become theirrector. He accepted St. Mi- 
chael’s, with its dependency of St. Mary’s Church, but 
declined to resume the charge of St. James’s, inasmuch 
as he wished to continue his rectorship of Zion Church 
in order to prosecute mission work in the neighborhood 
of Five Points. So far as numbers were concerned, 
Zion was still very prosperous. In that year, 1842, 
163 are reported as confirmed there, part of them, how- 
ever, coming from the City Mission free churches 
of Epiphany and All Saints. Three years more Mr. 
Richmond continued his labors at Zion Church in con- 
nection with St. Michael’s and St. Mary’s. By the 
end of that time he seems to have concluded that it was 


248 Annals of St. Michael’s 


impossible to support this work in the manner he had 
contemplated. The church was not made a free church, 
as he had hoped at the outset that it would be, and he 
did not find among the membership of the church suffi- 
cient support for his missionary schemes. There 
appears, also, to have been a feeling on the part of the 
older element in the Church that the divided responsi- 
bility of Zion and St. Michael’s was undesirable. 
Accordingly in 1845 Mr. Richmond resigned his charge 
of Zion, and returned definitely to St. Michael’s church. 

About this time a new work of church extension 
was developing in connection with that parish. In 1833 
the Rev. James Cook Richmond, who was then studying 
for the ministry and unofficially assisting his brother, 
had started a Sunday-school among the colored people, 
of whom there were many at Yorkville and Seneca 
village, a miserable settlement of low whites and colored 
people, on the site of the reservoir in Central Park. 
In 1841 another theological student, Thomas McClure 
Peters, attracted by Mr. Richmond’s reputation for 
missionary work, volunteered his assistance, and was 
assigned as a lay reader to St. Mary’s, Manhattanville. 
In 1843 Mr. Peters went abroad for a couple of years. 
Returning to the seminary in 1845 he again volunteered 
to assist Mr. Richmond in his missionary work. In 
addition to St. Mary’s he now took up the work which 
Mr. Richmond had already begun among the colored 
people at Yorkville, and Seneca village. Out of this 
work shortly grew All Angels’ Church. 

In 1847 Mr. Peters was ordained deacon, married Mr. 
Richmond’s adopted daughter, and became officially 
his assistant. Mr. Peters had been very much influenced 
by the Tractarian movement and was one of a number of 
the clergy who were anxious to develop more fully the 


Mission to Public Institutions Wo) (2s 


forms and ordinances of the Church and especially to 
conform in the services and the administration of the 
sacraments more precisely to what appeared to them 
to be the requirements of the Prayer Book. Among 
other things they advocated the use of daily morning 
and evening prayer in church, according to the forms 
set forth in the Prayer Book. Mr. Richmond, who 
was not in sympathy with these ritualistic and High- 
Church tendencies, proposed to Mr. Peters that, instead 
of conducting daily morning and evening prayer at St. 
Michael’s or St. Mary’s, at which there would be few 
or no worshippers, they should each take daily as much 
time as would be required for those services and use 
it in mission work among the poorest classes of the 
population, visiting their homes and conducting services 
in the public institutions or in the poorest neighbor- 
hoods of the city. Following out this suggestion, they 
gradually extended their ministrations to institution 
after institution, enlisting others, both laymen and 
clergymen in the work, and finally organizing the 
Mission to Public Institutions, to which reference has 
already been made. In laying down the rectorship of 
Zion Church, Mr. Richmond had therefore not given up 
missionary work, but merely directed his energies into 
a different channel. As the City Mission Society with 
its free chapels had undertaken to reach the middle 
classes, so by the new Mission to Public Institutions 
Mr. Richmond and his colleagues attempted to reach 
a still lower class, the absolutely needy, the unfortunate, 
the criminals, and the paupers. 

In 1849 Mrs. Richmond died of the cholera. At this 
time, owing to the discovery of gold in California, there 
was a great emigration to the Pacific slope, first to Cali- 
fornia itself, and then northward into Oregon. It 


250 Annals of St. Michael’s 


became necessary, accordingly, for the Church to send 
missionaries into that country. In 1850 the Domestic 
and Foreign Missionary Society called for young men 
to go and establish the Church in Oregon, but there 
was no answer to the appeal. Then Mr. Richmond, 
who was now without domestic ties which bound him 
to the East, felt it to be his duty to answer the Church’s 
call. Not certain whether this work would be permanent, 
or the mere temporary task of organizing the Church 
in the new territory for others to carry on, instead of 
resigning his cure at St. Michael’s Mr. Richmond asked 
leave of absence for one year, Mr. Peters to take his 
place for that period. March 19, 1851, the Vestry of 
St. Michael’s granted him, according to his request, 
leave of absence for “about a year to go to Oregon as 
missionary for the Domestic Committee of the Board of 
Missions.” He at once volunteered and was accepted. 

A great missionary meeting was held in St. Bartholo- 
mew’s Church, Sunday evening, March 23d, to bid him 
Godspeed, in which Bishop Chase of New Hampshire, 
Drs. Wainwright, Vinton, and Tyng and Rev. James C. 
Richmond took part. On this occasion Martin F. 
Tupper, having been requested on Saturday to prepare 
an ode, read the following: 


FOR THE OREGON MISSION 


Push on! to earth’s extremest verge,— 
And plant the Gospel there, 
Till wide Pacific’s angry surge 
Is soothed by Christian pray’r; 
Advance the standard, conquering van, 
And urge the triumph on, 
In zeal for God and love of man, 
To distant Oregon! 


Mission to Oregon 251 


Faint not, O soldier of the cross, 
Its standard-bearer thou! 

All California’s gold is dross 
To what thou winnest now! 

A vast new realm, wherein to search 
For truest treasure won, 

God’s jewels,—in his infant church 
Of newborn Oregon. 


Thou shalt not fail, thou shalt not fall! 
The gracious living Word 

Hath said of every land, that all 
Shall glorify the Lord: 

He shall be served from East to West, 
Yea—to the setting sun,— 

And Jesus’ name be loved and blessed 
In desert Oregon. 


Then Brothers! help in this good deed, 
And side with God to-day! 

Stand by His servant now, to speed 
His apostolic way: 

Bethlehem’s ever-leading star 
In mercy guides him on 

To light with holy fire from far 
The Star of Oregon. 

March 23, 1851. 


According to the letter of instructions (Spirit of Mis- 
sions, 1851, p. 215) issued to Mr. Richmond, dated 
March 26, 1851, his work was to be confined to the 
white settlers who were pouring into Oregon. He was 
to prospect, report on conditions, establish churches 
where possible, Sunday-schools where churches were not 
practicable, distribute the Prayer Book, encourage lay 
reading, and above all take upa claim of land and 
build a house which should be a mission centre, 


252 Annals of St. Michael’s 


a home for himself and other missionaries until paro- 
chial churches should be established. The particular 
portion of Oregon in which he was advised to work was 
the lower Willamette valley, a circle with a radius of 
twenty-five miles, including Portland, Milwaukie, 
Oregon City, etc. His work was not to be extended 
to the Indians, of whom there were many at that time 
in the country, such work being reserved for later 
consideration when the Church should have been 
established among the white settlers. 

The trip to California in those days was a long and 
hard one by way of the Isthmus of Panama. Mr. 
Richmond has left quite an extended and interesting 
account of his journey across the peninsula and up the 
Pacific coast. He seems to have utilized his oppor- 
tunities for missionary work wherever he went. On 
Sunday, the 13th of April, he performed morning sery- 
ice on board the United States sloop of war Vzn- 
cennes, Captain Hudson, then lying at Tobago, and 
afterwards at the house of Captain Forbes. “After 
the service I presided at the organization of a Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church in the Island of Tobago.”’ The 
church was called the Church of the Ascension. Ward- 
ens and vestrymen were elected and Captain Forbes, 
the senior warden, “‘ stated his resolution to apply to 
the Foreign Committee of our port for a clergyman 
and to offer a salary of $1500. . . . This is prob- 
ably the first Protestant congregation ever organized 
in the republic of New Granada.”’ 

As this trip led Mr. Richmond into foreign parts, 
he was of course provided with a passport, bearing the 
signature of Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, 
which describes him as: “Five feet eight and a half 
inches in height with a broad forehead, hazel eyes, 


Church at New Granada 253 


prominent nose and chin, brown hair, dark complexion, 
round face and mouth of medium size.” That he was 
a handsome man is testified by the recollections of those 
who knew him as well as by his pictures. 

He left Panama for San Francisco on the 15th of 
April and was ill with Panama fever most of the jour- 
ney. Nevertheless, he managed to take part in relig- 
ious services which were held every day on board the 
steamer, bury one man at sea and marry a couple. 
They arrived at San Francisco on Monday morning, 
May sth, just after that town had been destroyed by 
fire; but, fortunately, he found a steamer sailing for 
Portland, Oregon, on the following day. Reaching Port- 
land, Oregon, Sunday, May 11th, by Wednesday, the 
14th, he had gathered together the Episcopalians of 
that city and urged upon them the election on the 
following Sunday of wardens and vestrymen. Ac- 
cordingly Sunday, May 18th, two wardens and eight 
vestrymen were elected and Trinity Church, Portland, 
organized, Mr. Richmond becoming its first rector. A 
week later, May 25th, he held his first service in Oregon 
City, and organized St. Paul’s Church. 

Mr. Richmond found in the territory one clergyman, 
Rev. St. Michael Fackler, who had come there from 
Missouri about four years before in search of health, 
and taken up a claim (640 acres) in Marion County 
near Oregon City, and who was cultivating the land and 
holding occasional services. With his assistance he 
organized, by June 23d, four churches, of two of which 
he took the rectorship, and of two, Mr. Fackler, subject 
to the approval of the Missionary Committee, to whom 
he recommended the appointment of Mr. Fackler as 
missionary, which was made. By December of that 
year he had organized six churches, the last being St. 


2 Annals of St. Michael’s 


John’s, Milwaukie. Mr. Richmond also took up a claim 
of landin Yam Hill County and built a log house upon 
it. Life was very rough in Oregon in those days. 
Every one had to do his own work, whether it were 
building or cooking or sewing or tilling the land. 
Prices were exorbitant. The houses were log cabins, 
rougher than the roughest camp in which people spend 
the summer to-day. There were no roads and no 
bridges. 

Loneliness and a craving for social intercourse are 
strikingly manifest in Mr. Richmond’s letters to the 
Board of Missions, and soon his friends at home received 
a surprising piece of information. October 21, 1851, 
he was married to Miss Sarah Adelaide Adams, for- 
merly governess in his brother James’s family and 
later organist at St. Michael’s, who had gone out to 
Oregon to do missionary work, especially of an educa- 
tional character, about the time that he did. Their 
plan now was to establish a school, which they 
thought might ultimately grow into a college, on the 
claim which Mr. Richmond had taken up, making that, 
as proposed in the original letter of instructions, the 
centre and home of mission work in Oregon. The 
school was commenced with six scholars, March 16, 1852, 
but by that time Mr. Richmond was a sick man. On 
the 29th of February he had seriously exposed himself, 
riding all day in a deep snow and heavy storm, as a 
result of which he was taken ill and entirely incapaci- 
tated until the 12th of June, 1852. Under that date 
he writes to the Missionary Committee: “ At the time I 
was stricken with sickness, I had a prospect of more 
success in my Mission than at any former period since 
I engaged init.’ June 13th, although still far from 
well, he recommenced work. His preaching appoint- 


Illness and Return 255 


ments at that date were as follows: “Portland, twice; 
Milwaukie, four times; MHarris’s Ferry, McKay’s 
Prairie, Lafayette, Dayton and Milton, each once a 
month. His purpose was in the spring to visit the 
valley of the Umpqua, which he now intends doing in 
theautumn.”’ Besides the girls’ school and the prospect 
of a boys’ school he had one young man studying for the 
ministry. 

In spite of all his missionary enthusiasm, however, 
Mr. Richmond was at last forced to recognize that 
his health had suffered too severely to allow him to 
continue his mission, and in the autumn of that year 
he was compelled to resign and return to New York. 
The exact date of his return we do not know, but on 
March 14, 1853, according to the vestry records of St. 
Michael’s Church, he was again officiating as rector 
of St. Michael’s and St. Mary’s. His health had been 
seriously affected by the exposure of the Oregon trip, 
and while he resumed his parochial duties and mission 
labors with his old time enthusiasm and aggressiveness, 
he soon found himself obliged to resign one work after 
another to his assistant and son-in-law, Mr. Peters. 
One very important institution, however, resulted 
from Mr. Richmond’s labors in those last years of wan- 
ing strength and failing health. Together with Mrs. 
Richmond, who proved herself a most zealous and 
effective missionary, he established the House of Mercy 
forfallen women. It was on this work that he bestowed 
his last strength and affection, and here he held 
daily prayer until compelled to take to his bed. 

He died September 19, 1858. The record in the 
parish register reads: 


Rev. William Richmond, Rector of this Church, was 


256 Annals of St. Michael’s 


buried in the Church-yard between the Porch and the Gate 
on the 21st of September, 1858. Died September 19 
(Sunday) at quarter past one o’clock p.m. Aged sixty 
years, nine months, eight days. The funeral service was 
said by Dr. S. H. Turner, Dr. B. C. Cutler and Dr. Henry 
Anthon. 


His gravestone now stands in the crypt, beneath 
the Chapel of the Angels. His remains lie beneath the 
present church, and his grave is marked by a brass 
plate in the floor, while a marble tablet on the neighbor- 
ing pillar, erected by his grandson, William Richmond 
Peters, bears the inscription: 


Near this column 
Lie the mortal remains of 
The Rev. William Richmond 
Rector of this church 
1820-1837 and 1842-1858. 
He was distinguished for zeal and 
missionary enterprise and has 
left as his most abiding mon- 
ument churches and charities 
established by his labors. 


His prayers and his alms are 
gone up for a memorial unto God. 


“Those who sleep in Jesus 
God will bring with him.” 


Mrs. Richmond survived her husband seven years. 
The record of her wonderful work for fallen women 
and nameless children is contained elsewhere in this 
volume. 


CHAPTER XI 


FOURTH RECTOR 


Rev. JaMEs Cook RicHMOND 
1837-1842 


EV. JAMES COOK RICHMOND, younger 
R brother of the preceding, son of William 
Richmond and Clarissa Andrews, his wife, 

was born in Providence, Rhode Island, March 18, 1808. 
He was fitted for college at Phillips Exeter Academy 
and graduated from Harvard in 1828. Hemade a bril- 
liant record as a scholar and was Hasty Pudding poet 
and class poet. He was an associate of Edward Ever- 
ett Hale, Robert L. Winthrop, C. C. Felton and Oliver 
Wendell Holmes on the editorial board of the Harvard 
Register during his college career, and “The Rain 
Drop,” printed in that magazine in December 1827, 
was set to music and became a popular song. In 
later life he wrote several poems which were pub- 
lished in book form: The Country Schoolmaster in 
Love, A Midsummer's Day Dream and Metacomet. 
After leaving college he studied in Germany in the 
Universities of G6Ottingen and Halle. In the latter 
university he attended lectures by Tholuck, the famous 
Bible scholar and commentator. From a letter to the 
Church Fournal of New York, entitled “A Traveller’s 

257 


258 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Reminiscences: About the Greek, English and Amer- 
ican Branches of the Holy Catholic Tree,” published 
in 1863, I extract the following, which gives a good idea 
both of his studies in Europe and also of the religious 
point of view which he maintained in his later life: 


But to come to experience. In 1828, having gone 
through the Arian course in Harvard, under good old 
Dr. Wall’s pulpit teachings, I sought Germany; and in a 
year was made unhappy by the confusion confounded of 
rising German infidelity called falsely, like Gnosis of S. Paul, 
Neology. Thence I fled to Italy; read the then unanswered, 
but not confuted, ““End of Controversy’; saw the Pope 
and Cardinals, and consulted and disputed much with 
Bishops and priests and deacons. I found that Latinism 
was not Catholicity. But after another year in Italy and 
France, I turned my pilgrimage towards the fountain head, 
and reached the land where S. Paul taught, and where the 
language of the New Testament is still spoken. There, 
first, the light began to dawn upon my darkness. Edu- 
cated a New England Puritan, taught in a New Hampshire 
semi-Orthodox school, graduating at an Arian University, 
a student of Gottingen and Halle under infidel theological 
doctors,where every man is, orwas,a Church for himself,with 
my poor young head broken to pieces, and all confused and 
miserable in this dream of contradictions, and I, still a poor 
pilgrim ; looking for teachers in this DESERT OF DOUBTS, 
finding no Catholicity in Rome, I now stood at last upon 
Mars’ Hill, and heard around me, from living men, the 
words of the tongue in which S. Paul had spoken. One 
thing came quickly and forever; and doubt fled on that 
theme. If (said I in my twilight) the good Baptists are 
thickest in my native Rhode Island, because Roger Williams 
planted them there in March, 1639 (though he gave it all up 
himself more than four years before he died); if the good 
Quakers abound where William Penn planted them; if the 


REV. JAMES COOK RICHMOND 
Fourth Rec*or, 1837-1842 


Mission to Greece 259 


doctrines of Confucius prevail in China, he being a Chinese 
philosopher; those of Zoroaster in Persia, and of Mohammed 
first in Arabia, for the same reason: so, Episcopacy 1s still 
universal in the East, and the only way known to Oriental 
Christians, and the only way they ever heard of, till a new 
way was brought from a new world:—I say, Episcopacy is 
here, because the Lord and His Blessed Apostles planied it 
here! Ah! whats new is none. Guided by this single thread I 
wound my way, I trust and hope forever, out of the whole 
Puritan labyrinth, in which poor fragmentary New England 
and daughters still blindly grope for the light in an everlast- 
ing endless “‘Suspense of Faith,” as Dr. Bellows tells us. 
Then I began to talk with the Greek Priests and Bishops, 
and found we might be one. But the people in poor Greece 
had just emerged from a slavery of four-hundred years. With 
a learned and pious young Dane (now the Rev. Ferdinand 
Fenger, whom I have since visited in his own parsonage 
in Denmark, sat at table with his wife and eleven children, 
and heard his eloquence from his own pulpit) I walked 
through the Morea. I tried the children and the people and 
found not one boy of twelve years out of ten could read, 
not one school in ten villages, and in the tenth the teachers 
spelled the word school incorrectly, and not one woman in 
fifty could read. I formed a plan for America to pay back 
the debt, and enlighten Greece. Returning to Athens I found 
the Rev. Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hill had come in the 
interim; but of them and the Mission, I had never heard; 
for as I left America with doubts about the Holy Trinity, 
and doubts about everything else, I had not yet been bap- 
tized. I joined hands with them, the Missionaries, and 
when the hearts of their friends, even of the good Dr. Milnor, 
were beginning to fail, and the infant Mission was in danger 
of perishing, I hastened with Dr. Montgomery, of St. 
Stephen’s Church, to Philadelphia, called a meeting, at 
which Bishop White presided, and Dr. Bedell and a host of. 
the departed were present; did the same in New York, 
which Dr. Forbes reported in The Churchman; and then in. 


260 Annals of St. Michael’s 


all the chief Northern cities; until Mrs. Hill wrote, ‘under 
God you have saved the Mission.”” And America has paid 
back the debt; and has énlightened Greece. Ina lecture Charles 
Sumner declares the Greek schools to be now ‘“‘on a higher 
jooting than our own.” 


During his three or four years of study abroad, Mr. 
Richmond traveled, as will be seen, extensively. 
He possessed a peculiar facility for learning languages, 
and it was said at a later date that he could speak 
thirteen languages. Certainly he spoke German so 
fluently and understood it so thoroughly that he was 
able to preach in that language, not only correctly, 
but, if all reports are to be believed, eloquently. Asa 
result of his special interests, of his method of travel 
and of his own personality, for he was a most striking 
man physically as well as intellectually, he enjoyed 
peculiar opportunities of meeting men of mark, visiting 
among others the great poet Goethe, then residing in his 
old age at Weimar. Leigh Hunt, who met him appar- 
ently at this time, was greatly attracted by him, and 
with facetious reference to his height used to call him 
his “little American.” 

The revolutionary movements in Central and Western 
Europe occurred during the period of his sojourn abroad, 
and with his temperament it was inevitable that he 
should interest himself in those events. He was fired 
with zeal for both Greek and Italian freedom. His im- 
prudent utterances in regard to the latter brought him 
under suspicion of the tyrants of that day, and he was 
finally arrested by the Austrian government, charged 
with sedition, and underwent a brief imprisonment, 
before he was released through the intervention of 
his own government. 

On his return to this country he was baptized by his 


Baptism and Ordination 261 


brother, the Rev. William Richmond. The record of 
his baptism, in the register of St. Michael’s Church, is 
rather characteristic of the method of keeping records 
of both brothers. Under the year 1833, no nearer date 
being given, appears this entry: 


James Cook Richmond was baptized by me some time 
since, but I neglected to insert his baptism at the time. He 
was born in Providence, R. I., son of William Richmond 
second and Clarissa his wife. Witnesses: Mrs. Sarah C. 
Richmond and Thomas Andrews Richmond. 


James C. Richmond appears to have spent some time 
with his brother in New York, preparing for his ordina- 
tion, and during this period he worked under him in 
the missionary work which the latter was undertaking. 
I find this record in William Richmond’s handwriting: 
“A Sunday School was established by me in the village 
of Seneca, inhabited by colored people. The Rev. 
James Cook Richmond was the first teacher, before 
he was in orders.’’ He was ordained deacon and priest 
by Bishop Griswold of the Eastern Diocese, including 
all New England except Connecticut, at St. John’s 
Church, Providence, in 1832 and 1833 respectively: Dur- 
ing the year of his diaconate he did missionary work 
in Maine under Bishop Griswold, founding at that time 
St. Mark’s, Augusta. Shortly after his ordination 
as priest he went out to the missionary field of the 
northwest and was one of the three clergymen and six 
laymen who convened and organized the Diocese of 
Illinois in the city of Peoria, March g, 1835, electing 
Bishop Philander Chase, formerly of Ohio, Bishop of 
of the new Diocese. Mr. Richmond was at that time 
rector of Christ Church, Rushville, Schuyler Co., and 
Grace Church, Beardstown, Morgan Co., Ill., and four 


262 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of the six lay delegates to the Convention represented 
those churches. In the following year we find him at 
St. Paul’s Church, Norwalk, Conn., from which he was 
called to be assistant minister to his brother, Rev. 
William Richmond, at St. Michael’s, St. James’s, St. 
Mary’s, and St. Ann’s, New York, to enable the latter, 
as narrated above, to undertake his free church enter- 
prise. According to Mr. Richmond’s report of 1836 to 
the Convention Journal, Rev. James C. Richmond was 
then officiating four times on Sunday and once during 
the week. In 1837, William Richmond having resigned 
the charge of St. Michael’s, St. James’s, and St. Mary’s, 
James C. Richmond became rector in his stead. (St. 
Ann’s Church seems to have been abandoned at this 
time.) In his Convention report of that year, Rev. James 
C. Richmond notes that he “holds five services on 
Sundays in and around Bloomingdale;” that he offici- 
ates on Friday evenings at Yorkville and occasionally at 
St. Timothy’s Church, the new German Church which 
had been started in the previous year. He also reports 
a great service in the German language, held in St. 
Michael’s Church on Whitsun Monday of that year. In 
the following year, 1838, he reports that, with the assist- 
ance of Mr. Morris, the head of Trinity School, he is 
holding six services on Sunday, including one at the 
Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum; that additional work 
is to be undertaken at Yorkville, and that St. Mary’s 
Church, Manhattanville, heretofore opened only in the 
evenings, is to be opened in the mornings also. In 
1841 there is no report from Rev. James C. Richmond 
in the Convention Journal, although he is still rector of 
St. Michael’s Church. 

With the restlessness which characterized him, he 
had tired of parochial work and was planning a new mis- 


Rector of St. Michael's 263 


sionary effort, growing out of his interest in the Greek 
Church—no less an enterprise than to bring about 
union, or rather communion between the Eastern 
Church and the American and Anglican Churches. On 
October 25, 1841, a leave of absence was granted 
him by the vestries of St. Michael’s and St. James’s 
until Easter of 1842, with the proviso that if he did not 
return by that date his failure to return was to be con- 
sidered in itself as a resignation and William Richmond 
was again to become rector in his stead. I find no 
record of the details of this interesting mission on Rev. 
James Richmond’s part. His zeal and enthusiasm did 
not inspire the confidence of the conservative Anglican 
leaders. The Archbishop of Canterbury called him a 
lunatic,! and he returned to this country in the early 
part of 1842, disappointed in his endeavors. Although 
in the country, he did not show himself at St. Michael’s 
or St. James’s by Easter Day. Under date of June 10, 
1842, there is a minute in the Vestry records of St. 
Michael’s Church that, “whereas Rev. James Richmond 
was in the country on Easter Day, 1842, but has not 
shown himself at church,” therefore Rev. William 
Richmond is declared rector, in accordance with the 
terms of the leave of absence granted to Rev. James 
Richmond. The vestry of St. James’s Church at about 
the same date writes to ask his intentions and receives 
a formal resignation. 


1Mr. Richmond desired among other things ‘‘to preach the 
Gospel to the Turks, for whom the Church has been praying every 
year on all these Good Fridays past, but has never lifted a finger 
for their salvation.” He went to Lambeth and laid his plans 
before the Archbishop of Canterbury. His Grace told Mr. Rich- 
mond that the Turks would behead any one who should go to 
Constantinople on such an errand. Mr. Richmond replied: ‘‘ My 
head is ready.” 


264 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Rev. James C. Richmond now became a general mis- 
sionary in Rhode Island, where he founded Trinity 
Church, Pawtucket; St. James’s Church, Greenville; 
Emmanuel Church, Manville; and Christ Church, Lons- 
dale. But his most characteristic and most famous 
work in Rhode Island, for which he is remembered to 
this day, was his preaching under the Catholic Oak 
at Lonsdale. In 1843, while going to Diamond Hill, 
where he was to preach, he passed a large oak tree, 
which stands now between Broad Street, Lonsdale, and 
the street leading to the railroad station, surrounded 
by a brick mill and tenement houses and by railroad 
tracks, but which at that time stood in the centre of a 
grassy field, its wide-spreading branches nearly reaching 
out to cover the grave of the Rev. William Blackstone, 
then dead nearly two centuries, its base encompassed 
by a sort of mound. Impressed by the appearance of 
the tree and the possibilities of open-air preaching, 
which had never been attempted in this country in the 
Episcopal Church at that time, Mr. Richmond stopped 
and examined the site, finally saying: “What a beauti- 
ful tree this is! I think I will hold services here next 
Sunday.”’ He went at once into the residence of a neigh- 
bor, Mr. Ezra Kent, wrote his notice of the meeting, 
and placed it on a guide-board which was then located 
near the oak. The next Sunday, in full robes, he took 
his place between two huge roots which ran out from the 
tree on one side and formed a natural chancel. Young 
men and young women from Christ Church, Lonsdale, 
formed his choir.- There are said to have been 600 and 
more persons in attendance. Farmers had driven from 
a long distance and some people came even from Provi- 
dence to see this new marvel—an Episcopal preacher 
in full robes holding an out-of-door service. This sery- 


The Catholic Oak 265 


ice Mr. Richmond called the dedication service of the 
temple, and the tree he named “The Catholic Oak,” a 
name which became a household word to every one in 
the Blackstone valley. Persons were present who had 
never been induced to enter a church, and the occasion 
was a memorable one in the religious annals of Rhode 
Island. After that Mr. Richmond held services each 
month beneath this tree, preaching to large audiences 
who seemed willing and anxious to hear him, never 
mind how long he might preach to them. Men who 
never went inside the doors of a church were always 
ready to “hear Richmond preach.” After he had 
maintained these services several months, he was sent 
to another part of the Diocese, but each year on Whit- 
sunday he came back to preach under the Catholic Oak 
until 1847, when he went to Europe. On his return to 
this country, in 1851, he preached for the last time 
under the branches of the old oak and this apparently 
was the last religious service ever held there. Thirty- 
seven years after his death, on the Sunday after Ascen- 
sion, May 24, 1903, a brass plate was put on the stump 
of a sawed-off branch of the Catholic Oak with this 
inscription: “Under this oak preached the Rev. 
James Cook Richmond, defender of the faith,” and the 
old tree was surrounded by an iron railing to protect 
it from harm. 

As defender of the faith Mr. Richmond was keenly in- 
terested in the struggle which began in New York shortly 
before he left that Diocese between High and Low, and 
which waged around Bishop Onderdonk’s trial, moral 
and ecclesiastical issues being almost hopelessly con- 
fused. Although a High-Churchman his outraged 
moral sense caused him to take an active part against 
the Bishop. To the controversy which ensued he con- 


266 Annals of St. Michael’s 


tributed The Conspiracy against the Bishop of New 
York in the Laugh of a Layman, published in 1845, 
and an introduction and notes to Pott and Wain- 
wright’s No Church without a Bishop. 

Mr. Richmond was a thorough believer in free 
churches and wherever he went his endeavor was to 
organize a church of the people. So at Pawtucket it was 
a free church which he organized in 1845, becoming its 
rector without salary, throwing himself upon the offer- 
ings of the people for his support. Two years later, 
August 30, 1847, he held a memorable service, in 
which, with his own hands, he broke ground and devoted 
the spot on which the church now stands to the erection 
of the sacred edifice. With that day’s service Mr. Rich- 
mond’s connection with Trinity Church terminated. 
He was a man of a very nervous temperament and his 
mind, highly organized, had become unstrung by its 
own ceaseless activity. 

He could not brook opposition. He must have loose 
rein or he could not work. He felt too much hampered by 
the restraints and limitations of a parochial charge. In 
Trinity Church, Pawtucket, the wardens could not hold him 
back. He was peculiarly interested in what he termed 
“Missions at large,’’ and insisted on holding services and 
making efforts to create an interest in the church and thus 
leading to its permanent creation in places where it had 
been hitherto unknown. This he felt was the work for 
which he was specially needed. After officiating at a 
place for some time he would apply to his Bishop to send 
some one else to take up the work for it was time for him to 
go somewhere else. Diamond Hill, Spragueville, Crompton, 
Burrillville, Chepatchet and Greenville were among the places 
in which he labored. He thought “Trinity Church, Paw- 
tucket, Mass., promised to be the most prosperous of all.’”! 


i1From an address on the occasion of placing the tablet in memory 


Travels in Holy Land 267 


It was very difficult with Mr. Richmond to determine 
whether or when his peculiar genius passed beyond the 
limits of sanity. An obituary in the Boston Advertiser 
at the time of his death speaks of him as “ distinguished 
for his originality, learning and eccentricity, but his 
peculiarities caused him to be looked upon sometimes 
as insane.’’ His often startling actions, his vehement 
controversies and at times his personal denunciations 
(sometimes in preaching he would leave the pulpit and 
come down into the aisle of the church, that he might 
speak more directly to those for whom he felt he had 
a message) of those whom he counted evil-doers or 
recreants to the faith, led not a few to question his 
sanity. But Bishop Clark, who on another occasion 
styled him an “encyclopeedia,”’ because of his astonish- 
ing scope and accuracy of information, when asked if he 
thought Mr. Richmond was insane, replied: “No, sir, 
surely not, but it is hard to distinguish the difference 
between a man of high genius and one who is insane.” 

As rest and change were absolutely essential to his 
recovery of balance, Mr. Richmond went abroad, as 
already narrated, returning to this country in 1851. 
During this period he visited the Holy Land with Dr. 
afterwards Bishop Wainwright, with whom he collabo- 
rated in the narrative and descriptive work Pathways 
and Abiding Places of Our Lord, Dr. Wainwright 
also dedicating to him, out of gratitude for his assist- 
ance, another work, Land of Bondage. This was the 
period of the great revolution in Europe. Mr. Richmond 
was stirred by this uprising, and especially by the 
Hungarian struggle for freedom. He made the ac- 


of Rev. James Cook Richmond on the Catholic Oak, and the Semi- 
Centennial services of Trinity Church, Pawtucket, which grew out 
of Mr. Richmond’s preaching beneath that tree. 


268 Annals of St. Michael’s 


quaintance of Kossuth and later was instrumental in 
introducing him to this country. In England the 
Ecclesiastical revolutionists attracted him and he be- 
came an intimate of Pusey, Newman, and the Oxford 
group. In an article in the Liverpool Courier at the 
time of his return to America, describing his preaching 
in England, where he delivered lectures and preached 
both in English and in German, interesting himself 
among other things in advocating the cause of educa- 
tional and benevolent institutions, the writer speaks of 
his remarkable eloquence, unhesitatingly placing him 
in the very first rank of living preachers. During this 
trip Mr. Richmond published at Glasgow A Visit to 
Iona, and at London his Indian poem, Metacomet, 
already mentioned. On his return to this country he 
published The Rhode Island Cottage, a true narrative 
; of the sorrows and religious experiences of a sorely 
| afflicted family named Taggart, living on Rhode Island 
- proper, almost opposite the Richmond homestead at 
Little Compton. The story was so pathetic and so 
touchingly told that the little book reached its fifth 
thousand before the close of 1851, and one result of this 
publication was the erection and endowment of a 
church at that place. 

Mr. Richmond visited Europe again the next year 
or the year after and was in Greece in 1853. After his 
final return to this country he went west and took 
charge as rector of St. Paul’s Church, Milwaukee. 
Among his friends and parishioners there was the late 
U. S. Senator Matthew H. Carpenter. An address 
which the latter delivered at a meeting in St. Paul’s 
Church, shortly after the death of Mr. Richmond, in 
1866, gives such an admirable picture of the man, his 
personality, his doctrinal views, and the character of 


His Teaching and Preaching 269 


his preaching that I need make no apology for quot- 
ing it in some detail: 


No man ever assailed his orthodoxy. He believed most 
thoroughly, conscientiously, that the faith of the church to 
which he belonged was the faith once delivered to the saints, 
and the duty of contending, striving for the gospel, was with 
him no figure of speech. The divinity of Jesus, he believed 
to be the corner stone of the faith; and moreover he believed 
this to be the doctrine most assailed in our time. Against 
all such assailants he levelled his heaviest guns; he 
reasoned, argued, declaimed, denounced; not always in 
the most amiable style, but always in the warmest zeal, 
against all doubt upon this cardinal point. There was 
nothing that so often occupied his thoughts, nothing that 
so warmed the combativeness of his nature, and aroused the 
antagonism of his soul as this; and we who so often heard 
him can never forget his zeal, and the very great ability 
with which he always treated this grand and lofty theme. 
He was a stickler for all the services and ceremonies of the 
church; he believed all had been ordained in wisdom, for our 
good, and that even the minutest particulars ought rigidly 
to be obeyed. He was obedient to the etiquette of the 
Priesthood. With what unaffected reverence he always 
spoke of our venerable Bishop! Bishops in his belief had 
as absolute control over the subordinate priesthood, as a 
general over his soldiers. The subordinate might approve 
or disapprove, rejoice or regret, but must obey. The 
Bishop, he taught us, was an officer divinely commissioned 
in the church; the Vice Gerent of Christ, the Shepherd of our 
Souls. From him we must receive instruction, from him 
we must seek Confirmation. Though he did tell us, while 
the cradle of this church was being rocked in some discord 
of contention, that, if we were true believers, had been bap- 
tized in the church and confirmed by the Bishop, we could 
go to Heaven without the consent of the General Convention 
of Wisconsin. And I believe he knew. 


270 Annals of St. Michael’s 


But his manner, his gestures, his eloquence, who can 
describe? And who that has witnessed, can ever forget 
them? 

He was tall, raw-boned, with a haggard look, and in 
social life was extremely awkward; but when the abrupt 
and angular motions of his arms and body were disguised 
with robes, he seemed the personification of majesty. With 
what dignity of action he approached the altar. His 
manner was so impressive that I never wondered very much 
at the excited and susceptible little girl, who, the first time 
she ever attended any church, saw Father Richmond robed 
and entering the chancel; and when he opened the prayer 
book, and read in his authoritative style: “The Lord isin His 
holy temple, let all the earth—keep silence—before Him,” 
turned to her mother, and,in a whisper, asked, “‘is that God, 
mamma?” His lofty bearing, his careworn, haggard 
visage, his solemn, penetrating, awe inspiring voice. his 
clear articulation, his majestic and expressive accent, made 
you feel, in a moment, that you were in the presence of a 
master. Considering the service as a mere human compo- 
sition, and tested by the usual canons of rhetoric, I have 
heard it read better by othermen. But regarded as a service 
jor a universal church; as a medium of communication be- 
tween the heart of man and the Jehovah of the universe; 
as an utterance of exultant glowing praise, or the shriek of 
a soul writhing in the anguish of almost annihilating peni- 
tence, he is the only man I ever heard read it in a manner 
worthy of its high design. He would read the same psalms 
or prayers under a thousand different circumstances, and 
make you feel that they must have been composed for each 
particular occasion. His style both of reading and speak- 
ing, conformed to no system, was built upon no model, that 
I know of. It was his own, a part of himself, a heaven- 
sent gift. He imitated no man,—no man could imitate 
hime (aye 
The lessons, interrupted by explanations and comments 
from the fulness of his knowledge of the history, geography 


Conflict with Vestry 271 


and topography of the holy land, its hills and valleys, its 
caves and grottos, its fields and gardens, seemed always 
like a letter from some high-toned poetical friend. 

In taking up the collections, in the beginning of the 
offertory, when he repeated (for he knew the service by 
heart, and though he held the book for form’s sake, he read 
nothing) after a great sermon: 

“Tf we have sown unto you spiritual things—is it a 
great matier—if we shall reap your—worldly things?” 
And on receiving the offerings: 

“He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth to the Lord; 
and look! (holding up the plates) what he layeth out it 
shall be paid him again,” 

The effect was magical—you could almost feel the green- 
backs trying to move from your pocket. 

What life, what soul, what vigor, what beauty, his won- 
drous power would throw into the Epistles of Paul. Had 
he belonged to the Church of Rome, he would have prayed 
to Paul. He did almost worship his conception of that 
mighty master. Any man acquainted with Richmond 
would know that Paul, of all the human characters of the 
Bible, would have been his favorite. His labors, his 
struggles, his trials and sufferings. 

There were incidents in the life of pRveneserrds that 
would have seemed to a mind less tinged than his was, with 
that ‘‘melancholy madness” that is one step above genius, to 
bear some resemblance to the trials and contentions of 
Paul. Richmond believed there were times when it is as 
much the duty of a Christian to fight as to pray. On one 
occasion, certain persons disliking Mr. Richmond, changed 
the locks on the doors of this church, and bolted and 
barred it against RICHMOND, THE RECTOR!!! He 
assembled his congregation outside the church, men, women 
and children, and kneeling among them upon the wet 
ground he prayed, and then, to use his own language, he 
directed a battering ram against the door; “the door 
went down, and he came im.” He afterwards stated, on 


272 Annals of St. Michael’s 


oath, that he never performed any act of religious duty from 
higher or purer motives, or more free from anger or passion." 

But the manifestation of his real greatness, was in his 
preaching. He did not believe that ‘‘the foolishness of 
preaching” meant foolish preaching. He always spoke 
without notes. He opened his little Greek testament, 
read his text by translation from the original; gave a clear 
and always interesting description of the circumstances 
under which the text was spoken or written; gave its con- 
nection with the context, and then proceeded, “‘ Rejoicing 
like a strong man to run a race,” into the doctrine and 
philosophy of his subject. 

Father Richmond’s was the analytical method. He 
had great contempt for mere rhetoric, and held it alto- 
gether unsuitable to the desk. The priest had to deal with 
men, earnestly, in and about the most solemn and important 
concerns of the soul. Religious belief and faith must be 
bottomed upon facts, truths; the hearer must not only 
be induced to yield assent, but he must be convinced; it was 
of no. consequence whether he was pleased or displeased, 
so he was, even in spite of himself, if need be, convicted and 
convinced. The reason must be satisfied, or religion would 
be a mere emotion, and soon wither and die. This result, 
this convincing of the intellects of men, could only be 
accomplished by patient, plodding, laborious arguments, 
reasons, proofs; and so he set about his tasks. The first ten 


1‘*Tn Milwaukee he was universally known as Father Richmond 
and was, I am told, the first to work among the poor who retained a 
vivid and affectionate recollection of him. He insisted that they 
should come and be welcome in the pew-owned or rented St. Paul’s 
and his sermon ‘Tell John. . .and the poor have the gospel 
preached to them,’ in which he told the rich that the poor were 
coming into that church, was the occasion of locking him out, 
as above described. A man who was present told me that he re- 
peated the last clause ‘the poor have the gospel preached to them, 
and then, rising on his toes, looked round silently for the poor 
aE. then exclaimed: ‘Where are they?’ . . . then thun- 
dered: ‘You have driven them out,’ and proceeded with great 


Richmond’s Eloquence 273 


minutes of a sermon were occupied with short sentences; 
the foundations of his arguments were slowly and carefully 
laid, and the structure of his theory arose upon it as regu- 
larly, and stood as firmly and was as plainly seen, as a 
marble palace upon its foundations. The beauties of his 
sermons were beauties of proportion, symmetry, adapt- 
ation, not artificial ornaments and figures of speech. 
So that by the time he began to grow excited, when his eye 
began to blaze, and his cheek to grow pale, when he began 
to roll the thunders and dart the lightnings of his genius; 
you had been prepared for it; he had raised you up, had 
made you ashamed of the littleness of this world, and for 
the hour at least, he had stilled its ambition, its jealousy, its 
animosities; he had magnetized and inspired you; and 
speaker and hearer seemed to rise together into a clearer 
air and a higher life. 

This result attests eloquence in its highest development. 
You were not carried off in a balloon of rhetoric, or on a 
cloud of rainbow beauties; but you had gone with him, step 
by step, up the mountain side, you knew every foot of the 
ascent, and you could look where he pointed, far above the 
petty pursuits of life, to the pinnacles of faith and duty. 

Fine speaking, artful rhetoric, what the world accepts 
as oratory, are poor contemptible things, when compared 
with the eloquence Richmond possessed and constantly 


vehemence to bring the accusation home to the consciences of his 
hearers. As a result the vestry undertook to exclude him from 
the church in the manner narrated above. When Mr. Richmond 
undertook to break the door in on Sunday morning, using a timber 
which was lying near by as a battering ram, it is narrated that it 
was done to the Invocation: ‘In the name of the Father ’(bang) 
‘and of the Son’ (bang) ‘and of the Holy Ghost ’ (bang), and the 
door was drivenin. He considered it a religious service and this 
Invocation incident was long famous in Milwaukee. The vestry 
took the matter into court and the court sustained the rector’s right 
to enter his church and preach when he pleased.”” (From a private 
letter.) Later Mr. Richmond resigned the rectorship of St. Paul’s 
and started All Saints’ Church, Milwaukee, that he might have 
greater freedom to preach the Gospel to the poor. 


274 Annals of St. Michael’s 


practiced. He looked, as I have said, with contempt upon 
mere tricks of speech. I shall never forget the roguish 
look, with whichin a sermon, he turned his gaze upon several 
lawyers present, and informed them that Mercury was the 
god of orators and thieves. 

One remarkable effect of his preaching was that while 
you were perfectly delighted, it was with his subject entirely , 
and not with what he said; his language was but the medium 
through which the minds of his hearers seemed to catch 
glimpses of immortalthings; as, when you look througha tele- 
scope, you see the star, but never think of the glass. It was 
only when the sermon was ended, and you walked out into 
the common air and encountered common things, and his 
great thoughts began to fade gradually from your memory, 
as the headlands ‘‘recede and disappear” when, on the 
ocean’s bosom, you bid your “‘ Native land, Good night.” — 
then it was, that you began to think of Richmond, and that 
wondrous speech that had lifted you so above the littleness 
of common thoughts. 

He was at times fearfully personal. Some men whom 
he believed to be great rascals, in high confidence of their 
wealth and social and political standing, writhed beneath 
his pointed denunciations for a while, but soon sought 
easier seats in other churches. One such sermon we all 
remember.—There was awful fluttering among his birds; 
and clamorous complaints of his personalities were made to 
him. The next Sunday, he rose to preach, and read his 
text : 

‘‘And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he 
drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep and the 
oxen, and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew 
the tables,” etc. 

“‘Brethren,’’ said he, “I hear that the sermon I preached 
last Sunday has been objected to, that it was too pointed 
and personal. I have selected this text, as an instance in the 
life of the Savior, of somewhat pointed preaching.” He 
then went on, applying his scourge, until I believe all 


Pointed Preaching 275 


were convinced that his former sermon was not as per- 
sonal as it might have been. 

IT cannot close without reminding you how sublimely 
he celebrated the ordinances and sacraments of the church. 
I can only remind you of it; no tongue could describe it. 
If you have seen him by the sick bed of your dying children, 
as I saw him beside mine, in the very ante-chamber of 
death, baptizing little innocents, who were just fluttering 
like stray angels, wandered unawares from the pearly gate, 
and longing to return, as loth to remain in this sin stricken, 
wretched world; if you have seen him stretching out his arms 
repeating the solemn service, ‘“‘ We receive this child into 
the congregation of Christ’s flock, and do sign her with the 
sign of the cross”’; if you have clung to him for consolation 
when your wife and children, in the chamber of another 
dying child, were trembling and crying around you, and 
your own heart strings were breaking with grief; if you have 
gone with him, been led, sustained and supported by him 
to the grave of some dear one, gone before you; if you have 
heard from him, ‘“‘I am the resurrection and the life,” and 
‘‘Whoso believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he 
live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never 
die”; and, then, those dreadful words, that ring in your 
ears like the knell of last hopes while your heart is dissolving 
with sorrow: “‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust’; 
if you have followed him through such scenes, then cherish 
the memory of them in your hearts, you will never know the 
like again. 


One of Mr. Richmond’s sermons of this period was 
published in Milwaukee, under the title The Palm 
Sunday Sermon, and reached a third edition in 1859. 

It was inevitable that a man of Mr. Richmond’s 
temperament should be deeply stirred by the Civil War. 
His “ American Hymn,”’ which he entitled A Chant 
jor the Contest, Constitution, Country and Continent 


276 Annals of St. Michael’s 


shows the fervor of his zeal for the nation and for 
liberty: 
iT 
Ho for the Westward! Lengthen the border! 
Listen, thou earth, to the fiat of God: 
Angels exulting, hearken, while Order 
Springs, as the serpent sprang from the rod 
Held by the son of Amram, the day 
When God, through the Sea, hewed Israel’s way: 


CHORUS: 


Ho for the Westward! kindle the chorus, 
God’s Fiery Pillar flames right before us. 


II 


Ho for the Westward, nestled in wonders, 
Law, like an EAGLE, looked on the world, 
Bounded, full grown, from Sinai in thunders, 
Fluttered o’er Greece like a banner half furled, 
Eyried a season in old iron Rome, 
Flew over Europe, westward for home. 


CHORUS: 


Ho for the Westward! thunder the chorus, 
God’s ROYAL EAGLE soars right before us. 


III 


Ho for the Westward! Herald the war-cry! 
Who shall resist the TRUMPET of God? 
Tyrants, Columbia’s fall is a far-cry! 
Freedom, ye despots, now wields the rod: 
Strike off the fetters, lay down your rod, 
Four millions of bond-slaves are Freed-men of God! 


CHORUS: 
Ho for the Westward! herald the story, 
God’s clarion TRUMPET rings out before ye. 


War Chaplain 277 


IV 


Ho for the Westward! Strengthen the border! 
CHRIST AND HIS CROSS! THOU BANNER OF GOD! 
Now on the Chaos God stampeth Order, 
For Jesus is Truth, to rebels a rod! 
STARS FOUR AND THIRTY, ORDER AND LAws! 
STAR SPANGLED BANNER, CHRIST AND THE CROSS. 


CHORUS: 
Ho for the Westward! TRUMPET the story, 
PILLAR and EAGLE, GOD’S BANNER o’er ye! 


In 1861 Mr. Richmond went to the field with the 
Second Wisconsin Regiment as chaplain, telling his 
friends before he went that he had “a presentiment 
that I shall never return to the little church again; a 
presentiment that I shall never return at all. I am 
not very prudent. I may be killedin battle. I may die 
of disease. If so, let my friends meet in the little 
church and pray and speak of me just as I was. Tell 
them I had great faults, but tell them that I loved them 
and labored and longed for their salvation.’”’ As he 
foresaw, he did not return. The excitement proved too 
much for him, and, after another nervous breakdown, 
he retired from the active life of preaching to a farm 
which he owned at Poughkeepsie where his family had 
been living for some years. Here he was murdered by 
an angry farmhand with a fancied grievance on July 
20, 1866. 

Mr. Richmond was married June 4, 1835, to Sarah 
Seaton, daughter of Henry Seaton of Santa Cruz, by 
whom he had six children, four daughters and two 
sons, of whom two survive. Three of his children were 
long members of this parish. The eldest daughter, 
Sarah Seaton, an invaluable worker, was for over thirty- 


278 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Six years superintendent of the Sheltering Arms. She 
was also an active member of St. Michael’s branch of the 
Woman’s Auxiliary to the Board of Missions and repre- 
sented the parish in various capacities in benevolent 
and missionary work. She died December 21, 1906, 
and was succeeded in her position as superintendent 
of the Sheltering Arms by another sister, Katharine 
Seaton, who had been, since its foundation, the head of 
the Furniss cottage of that institution. Mr. Richmond’s 
eldest son, Henry Seaton, died in his infancy. His 
second son and youngest child, William, is a priest of 
the Church and was for twenty years rector of All 
Saints’ Church, Orange, N. J. . 

There are several memorials of Rev. James Cook 
Richmond in the various churches with which he was 
connected. In St. Michael’s Church he is commemo- 
rated by a Credence in the form of a niche, decorated by 
mosaics and bearing the inscription: 


TO THE GLORY OF GOD. IN MEMORY OF 
JAMES COOK RICHMOND, PRIEST. 
RECTOR 1837-1842. 


This was presented to the church by his family. An- 
other memorial, connected in a sense with this church, 
appropriate to his missionary zeal and activities, is the 
James Cook Richmond scholarship at Cape Mount, 
Liberia. Each year on Whitsunday for many years 
the children of the Sheltering Arms have presented in 
St. Michael’s Church an annual contribution which goes 
to support this scholarship in Mr. Richmond’s name. 


REV. THOMAS MCCLURE PETERS, S.T.D. 
Fifth Rector, 1858-1893 


CHAPTER XII 


FIFTH RECTOR 
Rev. THomas McCuureE PETERS 


1858-1893. 


England origin and birth. He was born “in 

an old wooden house in High Street, Boston, 
Mass., June 6, 1821, in the night, towards morning,”’ 
the second son and third child of Edward Dyer Peters, 
originally of Blue Hill, Me., a well-known lumber 
and commission merchant of Boston. He was sixth 
in the line of descent from Andrew Peters, who came 
to Boston about the middle of the seventeenth century, 
and died at Andover, Mass., December 13, 1713. His 
mother was Lucretia McClure, of a Scotch-Irish family 
which came to Boston from the neighborhood of Lon- 
donderry, Ireland, in 1729, part of a colony of religious 
immigrants who founded the Presbyterian Church 
in Federal Street, Boston. Thomas Peters’s ancestors 
were not in any sense famous men. On the other hand, 
each and every one of them on the Peters side was a 
good citizen, active and useful in Church and State and 
successful in affairs. His McClure ancestors were dis- 
tinctly religious men, all of them on this side of the 
water being deacons in the Federal Street Church, 

279 


er his two predecessors, Dr. Peters was of New 


280 Annals of St. Michael's 


while two of his uncles were Congregational ministers. 

It was the Unitarian movement which brought the 
Peters family into the Episcopal Church. When Dr. 
Channing, the pastor of the Federal Street Church, 
turned Unitarian, Deacon Thomas McClure, after 
whom his grandson, the subject of this sketch was 
named, unable to agree with his pastor’s unorthodox 
position, resigned his office of deacon, gave up his pew 
and removed to the Park Street Church. His daughter 
Lucretia and her husband, Edward Dyer Peters, who 
were fellow attendants with him at the Federal Street 
Church, were attracted by the character and preaching 
of Alonzo Potter, who had recently come to St. Paul’s 
Church, Boston, and took a pew there. And here Mr. 
Peters, who, as was frequently the case with Congrega- 
tionalists, had not been baptized in his infancy, was 
baptized with four of his children, including Thomas, 
on April 6, 1827, and the whole family entered the 
Church. 

During Peters’s infancy the family lived at No. 12 
Rowe Street, the Brooks and Evarts families living 
in the same street. Between the ages of seven and 
eleven years Peters attended the Chauncey Hall School, 
of which he says that it was “the best school for in- 
structing the children in English that I have ever had 
any knowledge of.’ There he came to the front in 
arithmetic and also obtained the title ‘Honest Tom,”’ 
for which, however, he suffered severely. He narrates 
how 


the teacher of mathematics on more than one occasion 
on leaving his classroom and returning found it noisy. 
His question would be: ‘““Tom, who has been talking?”’ 
Reply: ‘‘I have, sir.”—‘‘Anybody else?”—‘“‘Yes, sir,” 
—‘Who?”—“TI can’t tell.’ The old ruffian would then 


Peters’s Boyhood 281 


take me by the ear and drag me about the room, insisting 
that I should tell him, which I never did. 


His later characteristics seem to have shown them- 
selves distinctly at this early period. He writes: 


I had always a spirit rebellious against injustice, and 
refused to submit to undeserved punishment. I had al- 
ways a wretched hand-writing, much to Mr. Thayer's 
chagrin. One day he set out to whip me for not writing 
better, and sent me into a little room, called an office, where 
he was in the habit of punishing boys at his leisure. After 
school he came into the office and told me to hold out my 
hand, intending to strike the palm with a ruler. I told 
him he had no right to whip me for what I could not help, 
and thrust my hands into my pockets. He then hit me 
with his ruler wherever he could, and dismissed me. As I 
went out I said to him: ‘I won’t do anything the better for 
you, old Thayer,” and ran off. His way home lay past our 
door, and he went in, pretending to be dreadfully grieved 
at my behaviour. As Mother wished to please him, she 
made me carry him a dish of strawberries and cream the next 
morning, which I most unwillingly handed him. No other 
discipline followed. Mr. Thayer tried hard to make an orator 
of me for his public exhibitions, and one time tried to drill 
me on Cowper’s “‘Address to his Mother’s Picture,’”’ a small 
profile in a frame being placed in my hand to be apos- 
trophized. The orator was not there, and he gave it up. 


One of his brothers, not long after his death, thus 
described his characteristics in a letter to the writer: 


Thomas had one characteristic which commenced in 
his earliest days and lasted until he died. It was his great 
energy and determination. I never knew him to com- 
mence anything that he did not succeed in finishing, and in 
the very best manner. When he was a boy, and a scholar 
at St.,Paul’s Sunday School in Boston, he accepted a 
position as librarian of the school. The library was then in 


282 Annals of St. Michael’s 


a very bad condition, the books were very dirty and worn, 
and many books taken out before he commenced had not 
been returned. He at once called upon every one who 
had any books that had been taken out beyond the usual 
time to return them, and every Sunday he carried large 
quantities of books home and evenings during the week 
covered them all neatly with thick paper, and wrote the 
name of each book on the back, and continued to do so 
until he had them all covered. Then every one that took 
books out—he took the name of the boy and the book, and 
required them to be returned the next Sunday, or to let 
him know the reason why. The Sunday School Superin- 
tendent said they never had before a librarian that would 
compare with him. I never knew him to tell a lie; and, 
if asked a question by the teachers or his parents, he would 
always answer truly, or else he would not answer at all, 
and no threats or abuse by any one could ever make him 
answer if it would implicate any one else; but if he had 
transgressed any law of the school himself, he would always 
answer and tell the truth, He was the most conscientious 
person I ever saw, and had a keen sense of right and wrong. 


After leaving Mr. Thayer’s school, Peters, at the age 
of eleven, went to the famous Boston Latin School, 
where the Hon. William E. Evarts and the late Rev. 
EK. A. Washburn of Calvary Church were among his 
schoolmates, the latter one of his life-long and most 
intimate friends. He writes of himself that he 


ranked low in Latin and Greek departments. Stood at the 
head in English, especially mathematics. Left that school 
in this wise: Dillaway, the Head, demanded of me a com- 
position to be written on Saturday afternoon, our half- 
holiday, to atone for marks for talking. I did not con- 
sider that he had any control over my holiday, and refused 
to write it. He then set out to thrash me, and ordered 
me into an unused room. I refused to submit, and pre- 
pared for a struggle, upon which he left me and promised 


Home Life 283 


me that I should have my whipping after school. Thinking 
that he proposed to delegate Mr. Gardner, a large and 
strong usher, for the purpose, I concluded to absent myself. 
Not daring to go home, I started on a walk into the country. 
At night I stopped at a farmhouse and asked to be allowed 
to sleep on the hay in the barn. The people took me in 
and gave me good cheer and the best bed. Started next 
morning for Framingham. A railroad surveyor overtook 
me, gave me a nice dinner at his table and a ticket to 
Worcester. 


What the ending of this episode was, and the method 
in which Peters was finally brought back to Boston, I 
have been unable to ascertain. I only know that he 
was gone two or three days and that on his return he 
was not sent back to the Latin School, but finished 
his preparation for college in the private schools of 
Mr. Leverett (editor of the Latin dictionary) and Mr. 
Hubbard. 

The home life of the family was a happy one, par- 
ticularly for Thomas. He was beloved by every mem- 
ber of the family, and his relations to each and all 
his brothers and sisters continued intimate and affec- 
tionate until death. To the end of his life it was his 
custom to spend every Thanksgiving at the old home- 
stead, a title which the family applied to Mr. E. D. 
Peters’s country home at Jamaica Plains, now part of 
Boston, sometimes taking one or more of his children 
with him. He was especially devoted to his eldest sis- 
ter and his mother, a woman of a strong and very noble 
character, to whom the son was much indebted for 
the spiritual and intellectual side of his nature. The 
relations between the two were always most affectionate, 
his mother’s correspondence with him during his college 
life and afterwards to the day of her death revealing 


284 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the most intimate and tender relations. His father 
was a man much immersed in business and in the nature 
of the case less close to his children in their spiritual 
and mental growth than the mother. Outside of his 
business his interests were not broad; but he was a 
man of strong character, high integrity, charitable, 
religious, devoted to his family and a good father to his 
children. He died a wealthy man, but to the day of 
his death he seems to have been worried about his 
finances and esteemed himself in danger of poverty. 
He always lived simply and the manner of life of the 
family was such as would be considered to-day narrow 
and restricted. The theatre, dancing, balls, or even 
dinner parties were things unknown, and social relations 
were of the simplest. Mrs. Peters seems to have had 
a natural love of the beautiful which displayed itself 
always in a love of flowers and the beauties of nature, 
and later in life, after she began to travel, both in this 
country and abroad, in art and literature also. But 
the life of the Peters household during Thomas’s 
boyhood, as far as art and literature were concerned, 
was bare and narrow, the principal mental recreations 
of which we hear being lectures and sermons. Both 
parents also loved simple religious poetry, especially 
that of Cowper, after whom they named one of their 
sons. But if the home and social life were narrow and 
provincial, they were at the same time sound, whole- 
some, and refined. 
Of his religious impressions as a child Peters writes: 


I went to church assiduously as a matter of course twice, 
and to Sunday School at Grace and St. Paul’s Churches 
three times a Sunday. I was always resolving to be a 
better boy, but do not remember any distinct religious 
impressions. I always took part in the service, and then 


Religious Life of Family 285 


during the sermon laid down my head and went to sleep. 
I do not believe I reverenced the clergy much, for at St. 
Paul’s, in the Sunday School, I nicknamed Dr. Stone 
““Cephas” and always so spoke of him. 


The religious life of the family was of the Puritanical 
stamp characteristic of the period. There was a rigid 
observance of Sunday, under the old Jewish name of the 
Sabbath, but in a method not Jewish but evolved by 
the Puritans of the seventeenth century. The Sabbath 
began on Saturday evening. At sundown on that day 
books and games were put away; but at sundown on 
Sunday the Sabbath had come to an end and the chil- 
dren were set to prepare their tasks for the following 
day. Every Sunday morning, rain or shine, Mr. Peters 
went with his wife and children to St. Paul’s Church, 
but in the evening of almost every Sunday they attended 
service at a church of some other denomination, particu- 
larly the Methodist or Baptist, to which, and especially 
the Methodist, Mr. and Mrs. Peters felt attracted on 
account of their enthusiasm. It was the period of the 
Evangelical revival and the Peters family felt its 
influence. 

Thomas was the only one of the boys who desired to 
study for a learned profession. In 1837, at the age of 
sixteen, he was sent to Yale College, for orthodox boys 
in those days were not sent to Harvard, and the Peters 
family were all orthodox. Peters’s principal out-of- 
door amusement at college, as throughout life, was 
walking. Sometimes with one or two or more comrades, 
but more often alone, he took long tramps over the hills 
and through the beautiful country around New Haven. 
On these tramps he usually carried with him small 
pocket editions of English and classical authors. I 
have Cowper, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Young’s Night 


286 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Thoughts, Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel, a Horace 
and a Homer’s Zliad, which bear evidences of use in 
this manner. He was also fond of horseback-riding (to 
which in later life he added driving a good horse or 
horses), and much given to swimming, especially in the 
night. He seems to have seen little of college scrapes 
and escapades. He had few intimate friends in 
college, but that he was fond of his classmates and 
always cherished the memories of his college life is 
shown by his constant attendance through life at 
class meetings and the pleasant relations which he 
maintained with not a few of his former classmates. A 
letter from one of these gives a pleasing picture of their 
relations in college days, and an amusingly characteris- 
tic glimpse of Peters: 


Now, Thomas, the thought of you has brought back that 
wood fire and those shag barks and led me to talk as merrily 
as though you were sitting by cracking your nuts and 
jokes until some sober reflection led you to utter a little 
sage advice in a sudden and unexpected manner. I hope 
that ere this you have learned to laugh properly, without 
agitating your nether system silently for several minutes, 
and when others had forgotten the witticism suffering your 
mirth to escape in sundry singular cachinations. 


Through his college course Peters was still under the 
influence of the strict Puritanical ideas of his earlier 
training. He is horrified to hear of the popularity 
which theatrical representations are attaining in 
Boston and rejoices that the Connecticut law forbids 
theatres. Nevertheless his father and mother and 
elder sister are always fearful lest he fall into laxness 
under the temptations which surround him. His father, 
in one of his letters, objects to his practice of writing on 
Sunday, which he believes to be a desecration of the 


College Days 287 


holiness of that day, and at another time Thomas is 
compelled to defend his purpose of reading Gibbon, 
which his parents fear may undermine his belief. His 
letters frequently make reference to his reading. He 
admires Young’s Night Thoughts, Jane Austen’s novels, 
which he prefers to Scott, Milton’s Paradise Lost, 
Lamb’s Life and Letters, Prescott, and Irving. He 
also frequently refers to printed sermons read by 
him. That was the day of lecturing and he makes fre- 
quent reference to the delight of attending lectures— 
John Quincy Adams, Bushnell, Pierpont, Shepard on 
“Conchology,”’ Dana, the Boston poet,and so forth. A 
lecture by the last named on “ Women” impresses him 
very favorably, inasmuch as Dana’s ideas agreed with 
his own. Extremely conservative are the sentiments 
which he expresses in the letters of those days in com- 
parison with the liberal and progressive attitude of 
his later years. 

In his Senior year the question of the choice of a pro- 
fession came to the front. His point of view in this 
matter was very high and profoundly religious in the 
best sense of that word. He felt a desire to choose the 
profession in which he could do most good, not that 
which was pleasantest or most remunerative. This 
he supposes to be each person’s duty in life, but no one 
is compelled to choose that for which he feels an active 
aversion. “I think I should make a pretty good doc- 
tor,’’ he writes to his mother, “but fear I should make 
but asorry preacher. What thinkest thou?” Accord- 
ingly he began to make experiments with a view to 
becoming a doctor, but he was almost finicky in his 
aversion to dirt and to touching any unpleasant and un- 
clean thing, and after some conscientious and practical 
investigation he finally concluded, shortly before his 


288 Annals of St. Michael’s 


graduation, that, although he did not believe himself 
possessed of the preaching gift, nevertheless, as he 
could not be a physician, he must become a clergyman. 
These two professions seemed to him to offer the best 
opportunities of usefulness and therefore his choice was 
limited to them, for his whole idea of life, from his 
earliest years, was the distinctly religious one of 
service. 

Peters was always and everywhere religious, but 
his religion never took an emotional form. He was con- 
firmed in Trinity Church, New Haven, during the first 
term of his Sophomore year, in November, 1838, when 
he was seventeen years of age, but we hear of no re- 
ligious experiences or emotions. Emotional religion did 
not appeal to him. The religious surroundings of his 
college life were not altogether congenial, and in later 
life he sometimes showed a considerable prejudice 
against what he termed “Presbyterianism,” which 
must be traced, in part certainly, to the experiences 
of his college days. He used often to speak of the 
narrowness of the College in its treatment of Episco- 
palians in his time, and of the sort of petty persecution 
to which they were subjected. While regretting sin- 
cerely that Trinity College was ever founded, and 
deprecating the policy of establishing small colleges 
on a sectarian basis, he used to say that it was the 
treatment of Churchmen at Yale, in his day and before, 
which drove them to set up a college of their own at 
Hartford. 

The spring and summer vacations of 1841 Peters 
spent visiting in Washington and Baltimore and travel- 
ing in the south, the beginning of a series of travels 
which in the course of his life covered the larger part 
of the northern hemisphere. His diary of these journeys 


Practical Christianity 289 


shows a keenness of interest and observation, which 
was also to characterize his future traveling, so that 
traveling became to him a very important element 
in education and culture. His mother invited him to 
go abroad with her in June of 1841, but he felt it his 
duty to be present at Commencement, which fell in 
those days in August, and so declined. 

In the autumn of 1841 Peters entered the General 
Theological Seminary, situated then as now at Chelsea 
Square, West 2oth Street. In spite of his doubts about 
a theological career, he found himself at home at once 
and thoroughly enjoyed his studies, his fellow students, 
and his surroundings. From the outset he showed 
himself deeply interested in practical Christianity, in 
carrying the Gospel to the poor and needy, and scarcely 
had he entered the Seminary before he was engaged 
in mission work. Rev. William Richmond, rector of 
St. Michael’s Church, Bloomingdale, St. James’s 
Church, Hamilton Square, and St. Mary’s Church, 
Manhattanville, was already in those days well known 
as an ardent and zealous worker, who felt it to be his 
mission not only to establish the Church in all the 
waste places of the city and its suburbs, but even to 
carry the Gospel to the neglected inmates of the city 
institutions. Such a man appealed strongly to young 
Peters’s lofty views of service and self-sacrifice in the 
cause of the Master, and he had scarcely entered the 
Seminary before he offered his services to Mr. Rich- 
mond and began to work under him at St. Mary’s 
Church, Manhattanville, reading services twice a 
Sunday, taking charge of the Sunday School, visiting 
the sick, etc. His license as a lay reader, from Bishop 
Brownell of Connecticut—New York, it will be remem- 
bered, was without a Bishop at this period,—is dated 


290 Annals of St. Michael’s 


September 27, 1842, but Peters actually began to 
work at Manhattanville almost a year before this time, 
in October or November of 1841, just after Rev. James 
Richmond had left on his mission to the Turks. 

In the diary of his trip to Virginia Peters had spoken 
rather scoffingly of things Puritanical, but at the 
beginning of his theological course, although the seeds 
of revolt were planted, it is clear that he still continued 
to retain in general the Puritanical views in which he 
had been brought up with regard to the theatre, dan- 
cing, balls, and the like. He chides his sister in severe 
terms for going to see Fanny Kemble act. But al- 
though at the outset he retained these Puritanical 
views of life, theologically he began to react very 
rapidly from the Evangelical views in which he had 
been brought up. ‘Trained in a religious atmosphere 
where beauty was banished from worship and all forms 
were regarded as savoring of popery, he began to 
display a great love of the beautiful in worship and 
admiration for a noble ritual. Those among whom 
he had been reared saw little difference between the © 
Church and the Protestant communities about it. 
They cared little for orders, Apostolic succession, or 
historical continuity. He began to develop, on the 
other hand, a historic sense and a belief in organi- 
ization, laying great weight on Apostolic succession, 
orders, and historical continuity. His parents, espe- 
cially his father, looked with some distrust on the 
Seminary as a hotbed of dangerously High Church 
notions. In a letter, full of simple, religious feeling, 
he quotes to his son Dr. Alonzo Potter’s views with 
regard to the Seminary: ‘‘He thinks your institution 
rather High Church, but thinks a pious man may not 
be injured by it.” His mother quotes Alexander 


High Church Views 291 


Vinton, who regrets that two Boston boys are in the 
General Seminary and is sure that they will soon be 
tainted by Romanism. 

At that date the Alexandria Seminary r- presented 
the Low Church as the Genera Seminary represented 
the High Church pa ty. After the commencement of 
the War, when northe n students could no longer go 
to Alexandria, Dr. Potter, then Bishop of Pennsyl- 
vania, established the Philadelphia School, because of 
his distrust of the General Seminary That Seminary 
was in fact a hotbed of High Church ‘deas. The 
Oxford movement was at its height in England at this 
time and was already beginning to make itself felt in 
this country. Peters at once came under its influ- 
ence. The famous TRAcTS FOR THE TIMES led him 
to commence the reading of the Church Fathers, and 
before he had been many months in the Seminary he 
had become a High and exclusive Churchman, paying: 
much attention to outward forms and entertaining the 
loftiest views regarding the Sacraments. His letters 
are very much concerned with points of theology, 
methods of observing fasts, the nature of the Sacra- 
ments, and other doctrinal questions. But if in 
these regards he reacted against the Evangelical train- 
ing of his early days, nevertheless the earnestness of 
that Evangelical piety had impressed itself upon him 
and made him from his boyhood onward religious. 
He is concerned about the religious welfare of his. 
family and his friends. His sister’s confirmation fills 
him with great joy and he welcomes a proposition which 
she makes to devote herself to religious work, offering 
to see Bishop Chase on her behalf. On the other hand, 
he is much distressed because his family will not share 
his views of the Church and the Sacraments. His. 


292 Annals of St. Michael’s 


mother has not been confirmed and he is greatly per- 
turbed on that account. The New England theology 
in which they were trained is full of errors and he fears 
the effect of those errors on them. His mother very 
frankly tells him that he has become bigoted, and both 
his father and mother are anxious that he should leave 
the Seminary. His mother is also disturbed on account 
of his practical application to himself of his religious 
theories. She is afraid that his fasts may injure his 
health; that he is over-working in the mission work 
which he has undertaken at Manhattanville, and that 
he is starving and freezing himself in the effort to live 
simply, as he thinks a Christian ought to live. 
Finally, after almost two years of his Seminary life 
were passed, Mrs. Peters renewed her invitation to her 
son to accompany her on an European trip, and he 
accepted. They sailed from Boston in June, 1843, and 
spent about six weeks in Great Britain, with a brief 
trun over to Paris, devoting themselves especially to 
visiting the English cathedral towns. Mrs. Peters 
returned home in August, but her son determined to 
remain abroad and travel on his own account so 
thoroughly that he might learn to know the languages, 
the people, and the customs of Europe. For this pur- 
pose he spent the next two years traveling and 
sojourning in the Netherlands, France, Italy, and the 
East, including Egypt (quarantine for plague or cholera 
prevented him from reaching the Holy Land), but 
above all in Germany. He was a most industrious 
and diligent traveller, seeing and noting everything, 
from paintings, sculptures, architecture, and antiquities 
to the systems of sewerage, burial of the dead, clothes 
of the women, and amusing incidents of travel. He 
wrote very long and careful letters to his mother and 


Court Life at Saxe-Weimar 293 


sister at home, which have been preserved, and he 
also kept a full journal of his travels. Sometimes he 
traveled on foot with a knapsack on his back, hob- 
nobbing with the people. Rain-bound, he once spent 
three weeks in a peasant’s house in a village near 
Mayence. On the whole he enjoyed most such ex- 
periences among the plain people, but he was also 
thoroughly at his ease in court circles. Happening 
to meet on a steamer in the Mediterranean the Amer- 
ican Minister to Constantinople, Mr. Carr, the latter 
invited him to come to that city and appointed him 
an attaché of his legation. At that period young men 
of good family were appointed to such posts at various 
legations, to give them better opportunities of social 
intercourse and culture, a practice which was later 
prohibited. Peters remained in fact only about two 
weeks in Constantinople, but continued for many 
months to be technically an attaché to the legation at 
that point, a position which stood him in good stead 
socially in Germany, where he spent the winter of 
1844-45 at Saxe-Weimar, attracted by the traditions 
of the Goethe period, studying the German language 
and literature, and having entrée to the court by virtue 
of his diplomatic rank. Americans were not common 
in such places in those days, and he enjoyed the special 
favor of the court and the personal friendship of the 
Crown Prince and his wife. The experience was un- 
doubtedly useful to him. The customs and manners 
of life, so different from those at home, the differing 
religious ideas and practices, as, for example, in the 
observance of Sunday, were of great educative value. 
Thoroughly grounded as he was in the principles of 
religion, the court life presented no temptations to 
vice, but enlarged his views, removed his provincialism, 


294 Annals of St. Michael’s 


and helped greatly to develop that Christian and 
cosmopolitan gentlemanliness which were so noticeable 
in his later life. The change in his views regarding 
Sunday, the theatre, etc., showed itself at once in his 
correspondence, and his family were soon as much 
distressed about these new changes in his views of life 
and religion as they had been earlier in regard to the 
change of views which took place when he entered 
the Theological Seminary in New York. His father 
wished him to return to America, and although Peters 
desired to spend another year in Europe, he uncom- 
plainingly complied with his father’s wishes, returning 
to this country in 1845. At the end of October of that 
year he resumed his studies at the General Seminary 
and his work under Mr. Richmond at St. Mary’s 
Church, Manhattanville. 

Although Peters had almost completed his second 
year in the Seminary before his European trip, and 
had lost but little study time out of that year on his 
return, nevertheless he seems to have preferred to 
repeat the middle year in the Seminary, thus making 
his course four years instead of three. He finally 
graduated from the Seminary in 1847 and was ordained 
deacon in Calvary Church, New York, June 27th of 
that year, the ordaining Bishop being Bishop Brownell 
of Connecticut. Two days later, St. Peter’s Day, June 
29th, he was married to Alice Clarissa Richmond, the 
adopted daughter of Rev. and Mrs. William Richmond, 
and was at once appointed Assistant at St. Mary’s 
Church, Manhattanville, under the Rev. William 
Richmond. 

St. Mary’s Church was at that time in a very bad 
condition. No vestry meetings had been held since 
1840. It was heavily in debt. Its only dependence 


Mission to Public Institutions 295 


for income seems to have been the allowance received 
from Trinity Church, $300, reduced a little later 
to $200 annually. This was consumed, apparently, 
in the care of the building and other incidental expenses. 
No salary had been paid to the rector, William Rich- 
mond, and the arrears due him at that time amounted 
to about $6000, which was a lien onthe church. Peters 
set himself to build up an independent parish, and, as 
is recorded in the history of St. Mary’s, he succeeded 
in doing so. Much of the work at the little church he 
did with his own hands, often making the fire and 
ringing the bell to call the congregation together for 
worship. It was only in this way that he could secure 
results. He built a rectory with money collected from 
his family and friends. The German population of the 
city was then increasing rapidly and there were many 
Germans in the neighborhood of Manhattanville. 
Peters’s knowledge of the German language and of 
German life made him an acceptable worker among 
these people, and for their benefit, in addition to the 
English services, he conducted German services at St. 
Mary’s. 

In the same year, 1847, was organized the Mission 
to Public Institutions. As narrated in a preceding 
chapter, four or five of the city rectors had adopted 
the practice of opening their churches for daily prayer. 
Mr. Richmond, always in sympathy with work and 
workers as such, yet not in accord with the theological 
sentiment of these High Churchmen, was nevertneless 
inspired by the sight of their readiness voluntarily to 
undertake the confining task, far beyond what was 
considered a rector’s or pastor’s duty in those days. 
While he had no inclination to open his church for a 
daily service, at which but two or three members of 


296 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the congregation, and they among the most devout, 
could or would attend, he was not willing to be outdone 
in zeal for the Master’s service, and therefore proposed 
to his assistant that they should each take from their 
days at least as many hours as would be occupied by 
the attendance of each at daily Morning and Evening 
Prayer, and employ that time in hospitals, almshouses, 
or asylums. This was a scheme which appealed to 
Peters’s zeal and missionary spirit and he began almost 
at once holding services each week at the Colored Home 
in Yorkville, among the children on Randall’s Island, 
and in the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, Mr. Rich- 
mond taking, among other places, the Bloomingdale 
Asylum and the New York Orphan Asylum. The 
work rapidly extended. Peters’s methods were quite 
different from those of his father-in-law. He had 
essentially the gift of organization, and by 1849 the 
Mission to Public Institutions was well established. 
In it were enlisted the services of several laymen and 
clergymen, and the work was constantly extended; but 
it was not until 1853 that it was recognized by the 
Church and regular reports of the Mission to Public 
Institutions began to be made to the Convention of 
the Diocese. An appeal for funds issued in that year 
reads as follows: 


Having for the past two years kept up weekly services 
of our Church in the Orphan Asylums, Bellevue Hospital, 
the Colored Home and on Blackwell’s Island, I ask your 
aid in continuing the present work and extending the 
same blessing to Institutions which are now without it. 
The number of souls to whom for the coming year I hope 
to make our services accessible is about 5000. To affect 
this my own services are given at present for parts of three 


Rector of St. Mary’s 297 


days in each week. One thousand dollars is needed to 
pay other laborers and furnish books. 
THomas McC. PETERs. 
P.S. After this date a service will be held each Sunday 
morning among the 1400 children of Randall’s Island. 


May 9g, 1853. 


Three years after his ordination to the diaconate, 
on the fifth Sunday after Trinity, June 30, 1850, Peters 
was advanced to the priesthood by Bishop Whitting- 
ham of Maryland in Trinity Church, New York. It is 
rather curious to note that in these early years of his 
ministry, before he was priested, Peters came very 
near giving up his work in New York to go elsewhere. 
Early in 1849 he wrote to his cousin, John A. Peters 
of Bangor, Me., afterwards Chief Justice of that state, 
asking him to use his influence in securing him the 
rectorship of the church in that town, then vacant. 
This position was in fact offered to him, and he 
declined it. Why he should have sought it, and why 
he finally refused it I do not know. It was certainly 
a great gain to the Church in New York that he did 
not leave the city to seek a smaller and quieter work 
at that period. 

In 1851 Mr. Richmond obtained a leave of absence 
from St. Michael’s Church to goas a missionary to 
Oregon, and Peters was put in charge of that church 
during his absence, in addition to All Angels’ and St. 
Mary’s. During his temporary incumbency of St. 
Michael’s Church Mr. Peters was instrumental in es- 
tablishing another free church, St. Timothy’s. 

After his return to New York, February 24, 1853, 
Mr. Richmond resigned the rectorship of St. Mary’s 
Church. The Rev. George L. Neide and Rev. Thomas 
McClure Peters were nominated for the rectorship, and 


298 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the latter was elected by five votes, Mr. Neide receiving 
four. Mr. Peters was unwilling to accept the rector- 
ship if Mr. Neide wished it, and in a curious document 
still preserved he pledged himself to Mr. Neide to re- 
sign in six months if the latter so desired. Mr. Neide 
had been assisting Mr. Peters at Manhattanville during 
Mr. Richmond’s absence and was occupying the rectory 
built in 1852. By the arrangement which Mr. Peters 
now made, Mr. Neide continued to occupy the rectory 
while conducting mission work in Blackwell’s Island 
and elsewhere for the Mission to Public Institutions. 
This apparently satisfied him better than the rectorship 
of St. Mary’s and he willingly left to Mr. Peters the 
difficult task of making that parish independent and 
capable of really supporting a rector. 

In 1855 Mr. Peters removed from the old Van Horne 
house, where he had lived with his father-in-law up to 
that time, to the rectory at Manhattanville, and at the 
same time the Rev. Charles E. Phelps, a former class- 
mate of his in the Seminary, was appointed his assis- 
tant at St. Mary’s and All Angels’, with actual charge 
of the latter. Peters’s own contributions to the work 
of St. Mary’s Church were evidently large. There isa 
record, March 29, 1856, of a gift from him of $776.03 
“for repairs, balance unpaid.” Similarly he makes 
up the annual deficit at All Angels’ Church. During 
the early years of his ministry his father and mother 
were in the habit of giving him considerable sums for 
his work, which he used in this manner and also for the 
Mission to Public Institutions. On October 21, 1856, 
his father died, leaving him a moderate competency, 
from which he gave still more liberally to these works. 
Indeed, so liberal were his gifts to the various church 
and charitable works in which he was interested then 


Advocates Free Churches 299 


and throughout his life that his friends and neigh- 
bors, and especially his parishioners at St. Michael’s, 
regarded and often treated him asarich man. He 
was in fact rich in his gifts not in his accumulations. 

In connection with and in addition to the Mission to 
Public Institutions, it was Mr. Peters’s aim to establish 
free churches throughout the city. To place them on 
a sound financial basis, he organized St. Michael’s Free 
Church Society, which was to be the holding society 
for lands and funds for various such churches. To 
this was transferred the property held for All Angels’ 
Church in the name of St. Michael’s, and for this 
Society, in connection with Mr. James Punnett, Mr. 
Peter C. Tiemann, and others, Mr. Peters secured a 
piece of land in Manhattanville to be acquired, it 
was hoped, by St. Mary’s Church. The debt on 
this property, however, was never paid and finally, in 
1870, it was sold and acquired by.the Sheltering Arms. 
It is on this land that the older buildings of that 
institution were erected. 

Dr. Peters was a devoted adherent of the principles 
of the ‘‘free Church.’’ In a sermon preached before the 
Free Church Guild in St. Ann’s Church, December 4, 
1873, and which had a large circulation and attracted 
much attention at the time, he says: “I entered upon 
my ministry six and twenty years ago, with the resolu- 
tion never to be pastor of any but a free church.” 
His devotion to the cause of the free churches almost 
resulted in the establishment, a few years later, of a 
new Church paper in New York. It was claimed that 
the Church press was too timid or too conservative to be 
willing to give a fair hearing to advocates of new meas- 
ures, doctrines, and policies, and particularly that it | 
would not give a fair hearing to the advocates of free 


300 Annals of St. Michael’s 


churches because of what one might call the Church 
corporation interests affected thereby. A small body 
of gentlemen, of which Dr. Peters was the head, sub- 
scribed a capital equal to the reputed capital of the 
largest Church paper of that day, to establish a new 
and free paper if necessary. Before actually estab- 
lishing such a paper, however, it was agreed that the 
situation should be thoroughly tested. Accordingly 
Dr. Peters prepared a series of twelve articles on free 
churches which he offered to the editor of the Church- 
man. ‘The latter agreed to publish them in successive 
issues of the paper. After a few had been published 
there came a sudden cessation, and on inquiry it was 
learned from the editor that the rectors of certain of 
the large churches had made so earnest a protest to 
him against the publication of such radical matter that 
he had thought it best to stop their publication so as 
not to offend valuable and influential clients. He was 
told forthwith of the arrangements which had been 
made in case no place could be found in the Church 
press for the publication of this or other similar material 
dealing with live issues and root principles, and the 
publication of the remaining papers was at once 
resumed and completed. To-day, it is needless to say, 
there would be no need of using a club to secure the 
admission of such articles into the journal which 
regarded it with apprehension for the safety of its 
subscription and advertising lists at that date. 

In 1857 Mr. Peters organized a Church pay school in 
Manhattanville. Among others whose interest he had 
enlisted in his mission work were two young men, then 
studying for orders, S. H. Hilliard, now the Secretary of 
the Church Temperance Society in Massachusetts, and 
Leighton Coleman, now Bishop of Delaware. They 


A Parish School 301 


became inmates of his house for purposes of work and 
study, and Mr. Hilliard was made the teacher of this 
school. It was intended to be a classical school, under 
Church influences, for the education of the children of 
the more cultivated classes in the upper part of the 
island, where no high grade schools at that time 
existed. A building was erected on the land acquired 
for St. Mary’s Church, and in this building the school 
was conducted until 1864, by which time the removal of 
residents of the class for whose children the school was 
originally designed on the one side and the increased 
facility of communication with the city on the other 
side, rendered it superfluous. Among others who had 
charge of this school during its existence was the late 
Bishop Seymour of Springfield. 

Interested in all sorts of neighborhood and benevolent 
works, Mr. Peters was at this period, in conjunction 
with Dr. Williams, Mr. Tiemann, Mr. Punnett, Dr. 
Brown, and others, instrumental in starting a dis- 
pensary in Manhattanville, out of which ultimately 
grew the Manhattan Hospital (now the J. Hood 
Wright), of which he was first vice-president. He was 
also a leader in founding the Manhattan Library, which 
occupied for many years a brick building in Man-- 
hattanville and was a valuable educative agent in that 
neighborhood. A change of population in the years 
following Mr. Peters’s departure from St. Mary’s 
rendered it impossible to continue its support and it 
was finally abandoned about 1866 or 1867. A minute 
of the City Mission Society in the latter year records 
the purchase of the books of that library for distribu- 
tion in the public institutions. 

On the death of Mr. Richmond, in September, 1858, 
Mr. Peters was called to the rectorship of St. Michael’s 


302 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Church. In accepting this call he resigned from St. 
Mary’s Church, which was now able to support a 
rector of its own, and from All Angels’ Church, which 
had at last been placed on a footing which enabled it 
to stand by itself, with some assistance from Trinity 
Church, for it was always his desire, at the earliest 
possible moment, to make the churches which he was 
instrumental in establishing free and independ- 
ent and to compel them to stand upon their own 
base. 

For himself his resignation of the charge of those two 
churches meant greater freedom to devote himself to 
new and more extensive missionary labors. Mr. Rich- 
mond’s widow had during her husband’s lifetime 
devoted herself especially to a mission work among 
fallen women and had organized the House of Mercy 
in 1854. After Mr. Richmond’s death, Mr. Peters 
became her assistant and adviser in her chosen field of 
labor. She was full of zeal and enthusiasm, but not 
always practical or wise in her methods, and needed 
precisely such a helper and guide to make her work 
practicable and durable. 

In 1859 the House of Mercy acquired the old Howland 
mansion, at the foot of 86th Street, on the North River. 
It was an old-fashioned house, with a great entrance 
hall, large library, reception and dining rooms, and a 
broad staircase to the stories above, reminiscent of the 
prosperity and luxury of a former day, but entirely 
without what we call modern conveniences. Not a 
few of the rooms could be lighted only by candles. 
It was just the sort of a house which children would 
choose to play hide-and-seek in, and after sunset it was 
a place full of mysteries and dark shadows. Into this 
old house Mrs. Richmond had gathered from the streets 


A Sisterhood 303 


of New York a number of girls with whom she now 
made her home. They were wild, impatient of re- 
straint, often dangerous, and however willingly they 
might have originally come to the House of Mercy, 
finding themselves confined there for a definite period, 
they were always planning some method of escape. 
Mrs. Richmond had showed incomparable zeal and 
courage in gathering these women off the street. She 
proved quite incompetent to act as house mother of 
such a household, especially as she was engaged at the 
same time in founding other institutions and missions 
dealing with other phases and departments of the 
work. The conditions within the House of Mercy 
finally became so intolerable that she was compelled 
to appeal to Mr. Peters for help. 

About 1856 Dr. Muhlenberg had organized a Sister- 
hood of the Holy Communion for the care of St. 
Luke’s Hospital, the principal spirit in which was 
Sister Anne, who bore the title of First Sister. Into 
this sisterhood was admitted in the following year Miss 
Harriet Starr Cannon, originally of South Carolina, 
a woman of strong and dominant character. In the 
course of a few years dissension arose within this paro- 
chial sisterhood, and finally Sister Anne, finding that 
her ideas in regard to the methods and government of 
the sisterhood were not approved by some, if not most 
of its members, resigned her position. Dr. Muhlenberg 
thereupon declared the sisterhood dissolved by the 
withdrawal of its head,and proposed anew organization, 
a company of Christian ladies who should work under 
Miss Ayres (Sister Anne) as matron of the hospital. 
Miss Cannon and three associates felt themselves to 
have been badly treated by Dr. Muhlenberg and with- 
drew from association with his work. Indeed, so 


> 


304 Annals of St. Michael’s 


strong was their feeling in the matter that they refused, 
in the following year, even to meet him. 

It was precisely at this period, when these four 
women, zealous and capable, with considerable ex- 
perience in work, found themselves without a vocation 
or occupation, that the House of Mercy was thrown on 
Mr. Peters’shands. Through his intimate acquaintance 
with Dr. Muhlenberg Mr. Peters was well acquainted 
with those who worked under him. Others looked 
somewhat askance at the “Sisters,’’ who were felt to 
have deserted St. Luke’s. Mr. Peters realized their 
character and their merits and in this emergency he 
turned to them to take charge of the House of Mercy, 
and in the following year enlisted their services to take 
charge of the Sheltering Arms, of which later. While 
their feeling toward Dr. Muhlenberg was one of resent- 
ment for treatment received, Dr. Muhlenberg on his 
part seems to have been thoroughly convinced of their 
capacity and their value as workers and was willing 
and glad that Mr. Peters should engage their assistance 
in these works. Both Mr. Peters and the “ Sisters ” 
seem shortly to have come to the conclusion that, in 
order to make their work effective, there should bea 
more definite and permanent organization of the nature 
of a sisterhood. Mr. Peters laid the matter before the 
Bishop of New York and suggested the appointment by 
him of a committee to take under advisement the 
question of the organization of such a sisterhood. The 
Bishop appointed on this committee the persons whom 
Mr. Peters proposed, adding him to the number. To 
this committee were submitted the general plans and 
principles proposed by Mr. Peters and the “Sisters,” 
as they were already called. The plan proposed by the 
committee of presbyters met with the Bishop’s ap- 


A Sisterhood 305 


proval, and on the Feast of the Purification, 1865, five 
sisters, Harriet Starr Cannon, Jane C. Haight, Sarah C. 
Bridge, Mary B. Heartt, and Amelia W. Asten were 
formally received by Bishop Potter in St. Michael’s 
Church as the first members of the Sisterhood of St. 
Mary, a society for the “performance of all spiritual 
and corporal works of mercy which a woman may 
perform, especially the care of the sick and the edu- 
cation of the young.’’ This was the first instance of 
the profession of sisters by a Bishop in our communion 
since the Reformation, and was a step beyond any 
which had been taken up to that time in England. 
The Sisters were anxious to have Mr. Peters as their 
spiritual director; but inasmuch as the Sisterhood was 
a distinct innovation, and was looked at with appre- 
hension from many quarters, he felt that for its own 
sake it must have as its chaplain some one well known 
in the Church at large, and who would command the 
confidence of the Church. With characteristic modesty 
he felt that he was not such a person, and at his sugges- 
tion and request the rector of Trinity Church became 
the spiritual director of the Sisterhood. Possibly, had 
Mr. Peters accepted the position which the Sisters de- 
sired him to accept, the development of the Sisterhood 
might have been different, and some of that excess of 
ritual, which caused difficulties a little later, might have 
been avoided. But although he declined to accept the 
position of spiritual adviser, for the first few years of 
their existence he remained in closest touch with the 
Sisters. The institutions of which they had charge, 
the House of Mercy, the Sheltering Arms, and St. 
Barnabas’s House, which latter had been committed to 
their care in 1865, were under Mr. Peters’s immediate 
direction, both temporal and spiritual, and his relations 


306 Annals of St. Michael’s 


with the Sisters were of the closest and most friendly 
description. 

Set free from the personal care for the inmates of the 
House of Mercy, Mrs. Richmond was able to develop 
further her remarkable work for fallen women. She 
opened the Home for Homeless Women and Children 
at 304 Mulberry Street, which in 1865 was taken over 
by the New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission 
Society and became St. Barnabas’s House, and out of 
which, in 1867, after her death, grew also the Midnight 
Mission. The last institution in this series which Mrs. 
Richmond was instrumental in founding, and in which 
Mr. Peters was her assistant and adviser, was the 
New York Infant Asylum, originally established in old 
Woodlawn, at 107th Street and Bloomingdale Road. 

Reference has been made to the Sheltering Arms, 
founded in 1864, of which Mr. Peters, in writing a 
sketch of his own life for his Yale Class history speaks 
as his “ proudest work.” 

There had been found on the steps of the City Hall 
a young blind girl, Minnie Bollard, now a member of 
this congregation and an inmate of the Blind Home, 
for whom no place could be found in any institution 
then existing in the city. No blind asylum would 
take her, because she was too young, no orphan or 
half-orphan asylum, because she was blind. The 
search for a home for this child revealed to Mr. Peters 
the fact that there were many others for whom no 
provision was made. It seemed to him necessary to 
establish an institution to care for such children, and 
he proposed also so to extend its scope that it might 
become a means of taking charge temporarily of 
children during periods of family distress. Sometimes 
through sickness or desertion by a husband a woman 


The Sheltering Arms 307 


was left with little children to provide for. She could 
go out and work for their support if she could only find 
a home in which to place them temporarily, until her 
husband’s recovery or return, or until they had grown 
old enough to earn something themselves and unite 
with her in making a home. Similarly husbands were 
temporarily left with children whom they did not wish 
to surrender, and for whom they yet had at the moment 
no way of providing. Institutions then existing de- 
manded the complete surrender of children. 

Mr. Peters’s plan was to keep parents in touch 
with their children, to let them contribute as much 
as they could for their support, and to hand their 
children back to them again at the earliest possible 
moment, so that the family life might continue. He 
invited a few friends to assist him in this under- 
taking, for which he proposed the name of St. John’s 
Inn. St. John, as the apostle of love, always appealed 
to him with singular power, and it seemed to him that 
the name of the apostle of love might well be applied 
to an institution which was to take loving care of 
little children. Dr. Muhlenberg asked him to select 
some other name, since a name similar to that was in 
his mind in connection with an institution which he 
was proposing to start, the later St. Johnland. Mr. 
Peters consented, provided that Dr. Muhlenberg would 
furnish him with a name equally as good. The meet- 
ing at which this occurred was held at Mr. Peters’s 
house on ro1st Street and Bloomingdale Road. Mr. 
Peters walked down with his friends to 84th Street 
and 8th Avenue, the nearest point at that time where 
the cars could be taken for the city. They were over- 
taken by a storm and took refuge in the shelter car 
at that place. That night Dr. Muhlenberg wrote to 


308 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Mr. Peters a letter, saying that the old car which the 
Railroad Company had utilized for a shelter had sug- 
gested the very name he wanted, “The Shelter.” 
Out of this suggestion Mr. Peters evolved the name 
now so famous, “The Sheltering Arms (of Jesus),” the 
last words not being actually used in the title, because 
too sacred for common use and readily understood from 
the context. To make the institution a success re- 
quired, however, a sacrifice. It must have a home in 
which to start. When he became rector of St. Mi- 
chael’s, Mr. Peters had bought the large house built 
by Mr. D. S. Jackson, for many years warden of St. 
Michael’s Church, and at one time occupied by him, 
which stood, until very recently, at rorst Street and 
Broadway, surrounded by beautiful grounds, an acre 
and a half in extent. To establish the institution Mr. 
Peters offered the use of this house, free of charge, for ten 
years; and he and his family moved out of their beloved 
home to make room for the little waifs from the street. 

Mr. Peters dearly loved children, and this insti- 
tution which brought children together and cared for 
them appealed to him more than any other work in 
which he was engaged. It was his special pride and 
his special delight throughout his life. Each child 
in the institution was his personal friend. He studied 
the work which was being done for children all over 
the world, and his plans for the Sheltering Arms, of 
caring for children in little groups and preventing them 
from being institutionalized, of providing them with 
normal garments instead of institutional uniforms, of 
keeping them in touch with the outside world, of giving 
them in the Public Schools the same education and 
training which other children had, have been imitated 
since that time far and wide. 


The Sheltering Arms 309 


The condemnation of a considerable portion of the 
property occupied by the Sheltering Arms for the 
opening of the “Public Drive’ or Boulevard, now 
Broadway, in 1868, compelled a removal of the institu- 
tion to other quarters. Advantage was taken of this 
removal to erect suitable buildings better adapted for 
the segregation and training of the children, according 
to the methods approved by Dr. Peters and the trus- 
tees. For this, however, money was needed and some 
of the friends of the Sheltering Arms undertook a great 
bazaar in which they invited all the churches of the 
city to co-operate. Associations were formed in 
Trinity, Grace, St. Thomas’s, the Incarnation, Trinity 
Chapel, and many other churches to work for the Shel- 
tering Arms Bazaar. At this period party spirit in 
the Church ran high. The Sisters had developed 
ritualistic practices which were novel and offensive to 
many, and an agitation commenced against the Shel- 
tering Arms on that account, which seemed to threaten 
its further existence. The Sisters had already, in 
1867, withdrawn from the charge of St. Barnabas’s 
House, to avoid unpleasantness, and Dr. Peters, with 
Sister Ellen, had organized a new sisterhood with simple 
and more natural dress, and less rigid rules and forms, 
the Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd, to take charge 
of that institution. Now a demand was made on the 
trustees of the Sheltering Arms by not a few of its 
friends to discharge the Sisters. Dr. Peters, supported 
by the Executive Committee, refused to accede to this 
demand, even at the risk of alienating many friends and 
losing financial support. But although he and the 
Executive Committee were thus ready to stand by the 
Sisters, the latter suddenly notified Dr. Peters that 
they would leave the Sheltering Arms in ten days. 


310 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Dr. Peters’s report of this whole incident is printed as 
a note to this chapter, both because it illustrates so 
thoroughly his character and courage, and also because 
the hitherto published accounts of this incident, and 
indeed of the origin of the Sisterhood,! give a some- 
what erroneous impression, unfair both to the trustees 
of the Sheltering Arms and to Dr. Peters. 

By 1864 Dr. Peters’s mission work had assumed very 
large proportions. He had secured the interest and 
assistance of a number of prominent laymen, some of 
whom personally visited the various city institutions 
and held services, with a form prepared by him, at 
Blackwell’s Island, Randall’s Island, the House of 
Refuge, and elsewhere. Among these were Mr. Winston, 
Mr. Kitchen, president of the National Park Bank, Mr. 
James Punnett, president of the Bank of America, 
and Mr. William Alexander Smith. In 1864 Dr. 
Peters called a meeting of those interested in this 
Mission to Public Institutions and others at Calvary 
Church, the result of which was that the Mission to 
Public Institutions took over the formerly existing 
but now defunct Protestant Episcopal City Mission 
Society, with its admirable charter. From that time 
to the date of his death Dr. Peters was the head of the 
Executive Committee of the City Mission Society and 
its real director and administrator. It is not too 
much to say that the work done by that Society prac- 
tically changed the character of the Church in this city, 
making it, instead of the exclusive church of the cul- 
tured few, next to the Roman Catholic, the church of 
the masses. 

In 1867 the work of the City Missions had grown so 
large that it seemed impossible to manage it through a 


1See Harriet Starr Cannon: A Memoir, by Morgan Dix. 


City Mission Society 311 


voluntary committee, as heretofore, and the trustees 
decided that it was desirable to engage on a salary “‘a 
suitable person for the practical direction and manage- 
ment of the City Missions.”” The committee appointed 
to select such a man unanimously agreed to present 
the name of Dr. Peters. Their report shows clearly 
the part which he had played in organizing that 
mission : 


The Committee have been persuaded that in designating 
Dr. Peters to the charge of this most responsible and 
important work, they only recognize the great value of 
his past services to the City Mission. 

Its revival after long deadness, and its present efficiency 
are largely due to his zealous and patient labors, as also 
to his personal services, gifts and pecuniary advances 
on its behalf. He is thoroughly conversant with its 
history, its routine and scope, with its present necessities, 
and required agencies, in the coming time, and he pos- 
sesses, withal, as we believe, such special qualifications 
for the work, and such general respect and confidence, as 
will enable him to advance the interests of this Society, 
and make it an instrument of unspeakable good. 


According to the plan proposed by them Dr. Peters 
was to “retain the pastoral charge of St. Michael’s 
Church and receive its income, although devolving the 
burden of parochial duties upon an assistant.”’ His 
salary was fixed at $3000 to date from December 1, 
1867. This proposition and nomination were quite 
unexpected by Dr. Peters, but after consideration he 
concluded that it would be in the interest of the Church 
to accept. It was with some difficulty, however, that 
the Vestry of St. Michael’s Church was induced to 
accept the proposition and then it was approved only 
by a divided Vestry. 


312 Annals of St. Michael’s 


At a meeting of the Board of the City Missions on the 
19th of November, 1867, a letter was received from the 
Rev. Dr. Peters accepting the position and a resolution 
passed notifying the missionaries and others holding 
positions in the City Mission Society of his appoint- 
ment as executive head. Then Rev. Dr. Morgan, 
rector of St. Thomas’s Church and chairman of the 
committee on Dr. Peters’s appointment, reported that 
he had had a personal interview with the Bishop on 
the subject and that the Bishop refused to sanction 
the appointment. A committee of five laymen—F. S. 
Winston, Thomas W. Ogden, William Alexander Smith, 
William K. Kitchen, and Albert McNulty, Jr.—was 
then appointed to confer with the Bishop to ascertain 
and, if possible, remove his objections. The com- 
mittee met the Bishop, who had invited his counsel, 
Stephen B. Nash, to be present, and after some con- 
versation handed him a written statement. It being 
understood that the Bishop’s objections to the appoint- 
ment were in part personal, the committee took pains 
to incorporate in its statement certain historical facts 
which are of interest for this sketch, as showing to 
what extent the City Mission was indebted for its 
origin and support to Dr. Peters’s initiative and his 
direction: 


The City Mission was revived after it was practically 
dead for many years mainly for the purpose of making 
the Mission to Public Institutions, which was a voluntary 
Association, a Church Institution. 

This Mission to Public Institutions was commenced 
nearly twenty years ago by the Rev. Dr. Peters while 
assistant minister of St. Michael’s Church with the co- 
operation of the then Rector of that Parish, the Rev. 
William Richmond, D.D. In this work Dr. Peters has 


Report to the Bishop 313 


ever since faithfully labored while attending to his parish 
duties with an earnestness, self-sacrifice and increasing 
success, which has won the confidence and secured the 
co-operation of members of our Church until the Mission 
embraced in its benevolent design and labors nearly all 
the Public Institutions of the City both criminal and 
humane. The Mission was both prosperous and popular 
and no necessity existed of abandoning the voluntary 
organization under which the Society had attained its 
growth and importance. But it was more in accordance 
with the views of all those who were managing its affairs 
to place it on the platform of a recognized Society of the 
Church, not doubting that while it was loyal to Church 
authority all measures which experience should demon- 
strate to be necessary to its welfare and prosperity would 
be both permitted and encouraged. 

After the transfer of the work of the voluntary Society 
to the City Mission it became necessary to obtain from 
the Legislature of this state an amendment of its Charter 
that it might embrace such additional objects of general 
Christian benevolence as St. Barnabas House and other 
kindred objects. 

This was done and the field in which this Society now 
labors embraces the following institutions under the 
charge of the public authorities of the City. [Here are 
enumerated practically all the city institutions, together 
with a large number of private or semi-private institutions. ] 


The report proceeds: 


These objects and others not enumerated bring under 
the direct operations of this Society it is believed fully 
one hundred thousand persons annually and many of 
these are ministered to constantly throughout the year. 

The Society, in addition to the Clerical members who 
manage its affairs and the City Clergy who officiate as they 
have opportunity, employs eight Ministers of the Church 
as Missionaries whose time is wholly given to Missionary 


314 Annals of St. Michael’s 


labor. In addition the number of lay workers under the 
direction of the Society or laboring indirectly in its behalf 
on objects connected with it is believed to be not less than 
one hundred. 

Before the Society had attained its present magnitude 
it was found to be indispensable to the proper system- 
ization of its operations and the infusing of the requisite 
energy, regularity and economy into its affairs that a 
suitable clergyman should be appointed who had the 
experience and the ability and who would be responsible 
under the Ecclesiastical Authority and the Board for the 
proper administration of its various religious and secular 
concerns. ’ 

If the reasons are required why Dr. Peters was unani- 
mously selected for this office by the Executive Committee 
they are briefly as follows: 

He was practically the founder of our Mission to Public 
Institutions nearly twenty years ago and has continued 
his labors in them to this time, notwithstanding his duties 
as a Parish Minister. He has been either the founder 
or instigator and active promoter and the liberal bene- 
factor of nearly every other benevolent Institution now 
under the charge of the City Mission. 

In addition to his benefactions he has collected a large 
proportion of the funds necessary to the establishment 
and support of these institutions. 

His zeal, sound judgment, and practical benevolence are 
appreciated by a large number of the members of our 
Church, and possessing their confidence, he is better able 
than any Presbyter known to the Executive Committee 
to obtain the men and the means to carry on the exten- 
sive and increasing operations of the Society. He pos- 
sesses sound judgment and good executive ability and is 
fully capable to arrange, manage and direct the compli- 
cated and multiform affairs connected with the operations 
of the Society. 

His character and principles both moral and ecclesi- 


The Bishop’s Veto 315 


astical are believed to be both unimpeached and unim- 
peachable. 

For these and many other reasons not deemed necessary 
to state in this communication but which are of great 
importance to the interests of the Church and which will 
be given if necessary the Committee most respectfully 
but earnestly request your ecclesiastical consent to the 
appointment of the Rev. Dr. Peters to the position to 
which he has been appointed by the City Mission Society. 


In answer the Bishop read a communication, the 
text of which he declined to give to the Committee, 
refusing his consent to the proposed arrangement, by 
which Dr. Peters was to be made executive head and 
general director of the City Mission Society. This put 
an end to that proposition, and although Dr. Peters 
continued until the end of his life to act practically as 
executive head and general director, he did so as chair- 
man of the Executive Committee and an unpaid official. 
Ten years later it became necessary for the City Mission 
to engage a paid superintendent, but no further attempt 
was made to revive the plan of appointing Dr. Peters, 
vetoed by the Bishop in 1867. Whether the rejection 
of this proposition was to the ultimate advantage of 
the City Mission Society and of Dr. Peters’s work in 
general, we do not know; but we are distinctly of the 
opinion that for the interests of St. Michael’s parish 
as a parish it was a fortunate occurrence. Dr. Peters 
believed that the Bishop was largely influenced in his 
attitude toward him on this occasion by his activity 
in the question of the division of the Diocese, one of the 
few matters of importance in which Dr. Peters took 
any important part in Convention discussions and 
action. 

It will be remembered that the first division of the 


316 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Diocese into a western half, out of which were later 
created the dioceses of Central and Western New York, 
and an eastern half was finally effected in 1838. By 
1851 the Diocese of New York proper, the present dio- 
ceses of New York, Long Island, and Albany, had 
grown so unwieldy that a committee was appointed in 
the Diocesan Convention to consider and report on a 
division. That Committee reported back to the Con- 
vention of 1852 and no action was taken. New York 
had been without a Bishop since 1845, when Bishop 
Onderdonk had been sentenced and suspended for im- 
moral conduct. In 1852, Dr. Wainwright, rector of Grace 
Church, was elected provisional Bishop and it seemed 
to be the general opinion that, in view of the fact that 
the Diocese was now provided with a Bishop, it might 
not be necessary to proceed to division, or at least that 
there was noimmediate need of action. Dr. Wainwright 
wore himself out and died within two years. In 1854 
Dr. Horatio Potter, then rector of St. Peter’s, Troy, 
was chosen as his successor; both he and his principal 
competitor being represented as favoring the division 
of the Diocese. Division was, so to speak, one of the 
planks in each platform. After the election, however, 
the Journal of Convention contains no notice of any 
further discussion of the question of division until 1859. 
There had been in the meantime increasing complaints 
of inadequate Episcopal supervision and expressions of 
a desire for the division of the Diocese. In his Con- 
vention address of that year, 1859, Bishop Potter takes 
up and discusses the various informal propositions 
which had been made looking to division of the Diocese, 
reaching, however, an unfavorable conclusion. It was 
clear that the Bishop and Diocese both needed some 
sort of relief, and in order that the Bishop might not be 


Division of the Diocese 217, 


over-burdened and that the Diocese might be efficiently 
administered, Judge Murray Hoffman suggested the pos- 
sibility of rural deans to take a portion of the Bishop’s 
work. In the following year this proposal of rural 
deans was referred to a Committee of Seven, of which 
Judge Hoffman was one and Mr. Peters another, but 
in that form the idea did not appear practicable. The 
following year, 1861, the Bishop, in his Convention 
address, again discussed the question of the division of 
the Diocese in such a manner as to make it seem clear 
that some sort of relief was required, although he him- 
self was still opposed to division. This part of the 
address was referred to a Committee of Thirteen, of 
which Mr. Peters was again a member. 

He has often related to the writer the incidents of the 
struggle for division which ensued and described the 
great personal pressure brought to bear by the Bishop 
against division. Members of the Committee who 
were favorable to division were seen by the Bishop 
and in view of his strong personal opposition to division, 
although themselves convinced of its desirability, the 
majority finally refused to join in the report recom- 
mending it. One distinguished member of the com- 
mittee, who was instrumental in drawing up what 
proved to be the minority report and who was himself 
to have presented it in Convention, at the last moment 
absented himself from the city and from Convention, 
so as not to come in conflict with the Bishop. The 
committee finally presented a majority report, signed 
by eight members of the Committee, to the effect that 
“a division of this Diocese at the present time is deemed 
inexpedient.”” Two members of the Committee, in- 
cluding the mover of the original motion, Dr. Hawkes, 
absented themselves from Convention, and _ three, 


318 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Judge Hoffman, and Rev. Messrs. Peters and Payne, 
presented minority reports. The minority report of 
the two latter, printed in the Journal of 1862, contains 
a history of the whole matter and a proposition, origi- 
nating with Mr. Peters, looking to the ultimate division 
of the Diocese of New York into five parts, not imme- 
diately, but as occasion may arise. A statesmanlike 
scheme was proposed to provide for this division; and 
in connection with the proposed plan of division it was 
suggested that the General Convention should be re- 
quested to consider the subject of establishing provincial 
synods. 

According to this scheme the Diocese was to be 
divided into five districts or convocations: (1) the City 
and County of New York and the County of Richmond; 
(2) the Counties of Kings, Queens and Suffolk; (3) 
the Counties of Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess and 
Columbia; (4) the Counties of Rensselaer, Washington, 
Saratoga, Warren, Essex, Franklin and St. Lawrence, 
Rockland, Orange, Sullivan, Ulster and Delaware; (5) 
Greene, Albany, Schenectady, Schoharie, Otsego, Mont- 
gomery, Herkimer, Fulton and Hamilton. Each such 
convocation was to be empowered to deliberate upon 
the erection of its own district into a Diocese, and when- 
ever any convocation should vote in favor of such 
erection the subject was to come before the Diocesan 
Convention for action. 

The result of the discussion which followed the sub- 
mission of these reports was the appointment of a new 
Committee of Nine, of which Dr. Littlejohn, afterwards 
Bishop of Long Island, was chairman, and Mr. Peters 
a member, to consider further the question of the 
division of the Diocese in conference with the Bishop. 
At the next Convention, 1863, that Committee reported 


Ecclesiastical Recognition 319 


by a vote of eight to one in favor of division. Then 
the Bishop formally refused to agree to a division of 
his Diocese and the matter was tabled. 

The next year, in his Convention address, Bishop 
Potter again expressed his disapproval of division for 
the present. But sentiment on the subject had become 
too strong for him to resist and finally, in 1866, he was 
obliged, himself, to recognize the necessity of division, 
and so appointed a Committee of Fifteen to consider 
the subject once more. That Committee reported in 
favor of the present division of the Diocese, which was 
carried out in 1868. Dr. Peters had been omitted from 
this Committee, but it was generally understood that it 
was his persistence which had kept the matter to the 
front and been largely instrumental in securing the 
result. He prophesied at the time, however, that 
the method of division finally adopted, while better 
than nothing, was a mere makeshift measure, unsatis- 
factory and inadequate. In point of fact, to-day both 
Albany and New York are feeling the necessity of re- 
adjustment and further division, and the question is 
how it is to be properly accomplished. 

During this period, when Dr. Peters was so strongly 
advocating division, in opposition to the wishes of the 
Bishop of the Diocese, he was subjected to much 
pressure; but he was as obstinate as he was mild, and 
however much the Bishop might be able to induce 
others to change their opinions, it was absolutely im- 
possible to move him. The Bishop was a man who 
could not tolerate precisely this sort of opposition, 
and so long as he was Bishop of the Diocese, as Dr. 
Peters used to say afterwards, he was never appointed 
to any committee or entrusted with any duty con- 
ferring distinction or indicating confidence. Few prob- 


320 Annals of St. Michael’s 


ably realized how keenly Dr. Peters felt this, or how 
highly he appreciated the confidence of his fellow- 
Churchmen, and what position conferred by them meant 
to him. When near the close of his life, in 1891, he 
was elected to the Standing Committee, it was almost 
pathetic to see how the man who had accomplished 
such a great work in the Diocese, was delighted with 
this very tardy recognition on the part of his fellows 
in the Church. His appointment as Archdeacon of 
New York in the following year was a similar and 
if possibe greater source of gratification. 

In general, in view of the work done and the position 
actually held by him, the ecclesiastical recognition 
which he received was small. In 1865 Trinity College, 
Hartford, conferred upon him the title of S. T. D. 
About this time, also, the reputation of the work which 
he had accomplished in New York brought him two 
offers or partial offers of what were practically mis- 
sionary bishoprics. His father had come originally 
from Blue Hill, Me., and he was widely connected 
and well acquainted in that State. In the summer of 
1864 he visited Maine, taking two of his sons with him, 
and spent a couple of weeks traveling, largey by 
stage-coach—for there were few railroads in Maine in 
those days—over all the coast line, visiting his relatives 
and kinsfolk on both his father’s and his mother’s side, 
and making acquaintance, as I remember it (for I was 
one of the two boys) with all the Churchmen, and 
they were few in number, in the different towns and 
studying the Church situation. I understood vaguely 
at the time that it was in some way a Church mission, 
that his visit to Maine had something to do with the 
Church in that State, and afterwards was informed 
that certain influential Churchmen in Maine had sug- 


A Loyal Citizen 321 


gested his candidacy for Bishop of that Diocese in the 
near future. Dr. Peters, after conscientiously consid- 
ering the situation, concluded that the obligation to his 
mission work in New York was superior to any obliga- 
tion which could come to him in relation to Maine, 
and declined to have his name considered as a candi- 
date for Bishop of that State. 

In 1866 the Bishopric of Florida was offered to him 
by those who seemed to have authority in the matter. 
I always understood, from his own allusions to this 
affair that, the Diocese being in a desperate condition 
financially, their object was to secure a Bishop who 
had or was supposed to have means sufficient to sup- 
port himself and probably assist the Diocese also. 
He declined to consider the proposition for himself, 
but it was, as I always understood, at his nomination 
or suggestion that Dr. Young was made Bishop of that 
Diocese; and in later years Bishop Young used half 
jocularly to reproach Dr. Peters for having made him 
Bishop of Florida. 

During war times Dr. Peters’s command of the German 
language enabled him to minister to the German re- 
cruiting station which was maintained at gs5th Street 
and Broadway. Here, on a large property belonging 
to the Mott estate, where Dr. Williams lived for many 
years (his house is still standing, a curious little wooden 
structure, which looks as though it were upside down), 
a German regiment was encamped for some months, 
recruiting its strength and drilling preparatory to 
going to the front. Mr. Peters became their chaplain 
during that period and St. Michael’s their parish church. 
The first service held every Sunday—and Mr. Peters 
held at least five services somewhere each Sunday in 
those days—was in German for this regiment, which 


322 Annals of St. Michael’s 


filled the whole church. Mr. Peters, as might be sup- 
posed of a man of his temperament, was profoundly 
stirred by the war. A patriot and a citizen he desired 
to do his part for his country. It seemed impossible 
to leave the large mission work which depended upon 
him and offer himself to go to the front as chaplain. 
But throughout the war, although not, as a clergyman, 
subject to draft, he provided a substitute, paying him 
out of his own pocket. His house was the centre in 
which the women of the neighborhood gathered to 
work for the soldiers at the front. Many of his pa- 
rishioners were in the army, with whom he kept in close 
touch. After the war the writer of this sketch, making 
a visit to Richmond, found that Mr. Peters had been in 
the habit of corresponding with the rector of the Monu- 
mental Church with regard to his parishioners in the 
Confederate prisons, securing for them such friendly 
ministrations, spiritual and otherwise, as were prac- 
ticable and repaying the service by caring in a similar 
way for the prisoners of the Monumental Church who 
were confined in northern prisons. 

An earnest patriot, Dr. Peters belonged politically 
to the Democratic party, his democracy being con- 
ditioned on his general principles: his opposition to 
special privileges and consequently to a protective 
tariff; and thorough belief in the people and, as a con- 
sequence, in local self-government. He never, how- 
ever, expressed himself in any public manner on political 
issues; in fact he most carefully avoided any such ex- 
pression, believing that it would interfere with his relig- 
ious work. He always performed his duties as a voter 
and was a regular contributor to party funds. The 
local party organization always called on him in 
person for subscriptions for that as for all other neigh- 


qoaag yaS6 yo ySnozys Surgng soyye ‘uonisuvsy, Jo portog uy 
SWVITIIM “A “V "YO Ad GaIdNDDO ATYAWYOI ASNOH 


pee eneas 


ie 


ui 
Sag bak 


ji 


My 


i 


dil 


Services for Germans 323 


borhood matters, sure of a liberal response. Outside 
of politics every neighborhood enterprise or merry- 
making looked to Dr. Peters for sympathy and financial 
co-operation, if nothing else. Even those who “‘shot 
the devil” on New Year’s Eve, according to the old 
New York Dutch practice, always called at the rectory 
some time after midnight, when the devil was sup- 
posedly driven off, to ask and receive a liberal donation 
for their efforts in disturbing the rector’s peaceful sleep. 
He was fond of old customs, and even such a bad old 
custom as this he could not quite bring himself to 
frown upon; much less the practice of New Year's 
calling. On New Year’s Day he was always at home 
to receive his male parishioners, and on the two days 
following New Year’s he returned their calls. 

It was not only in holding services for German regi- 
ments that Dr. Peters made his knowledge of that 
language effective for good. There were, in the middle 
of the last century, a great number of Germans on the 
west side of the city from 59th Street to Manhattan- 
ville, without religious opportunities of any kind. 
Dr. Peters’s acquaintance with the German language, 
resulting from his residence in Germany, enabled him 
to reach these people and he considered the mission 
to them as among his obligations. To supply their 
needs services were held for many years in the 
German language in St. Mary’s or St. Michael’s 
Church. The largest settlement of these Germans 
and the most neglected of all lay too far southward 
to be readily accessible for either of these centres. A 
town of ragpickers of considerable size had grown up 
in the neighborhood of what is now 8th Avenue from 
86th Street southward. The creation of the park 
drove out such Germans as were in that neighbor- 


324 Annals of St. Michael’s 


hood, adding them to this colony. How in 1867 Dr. 
Peters commenced here the mission work out of which 
grew Bethlehem Chapel, and finally St. Matthew’s 
Church, is narrated elsewhere. 

Still one more church grew out of his efforts to realize 
his theory of the obligation of St. Michael’s Church to 
provide spiritual care for all the people in St. Michael’s 
territorial cure, establishing churches, if possible free 
churches, at different convenient points as the popu- 
lation increased. He did not believe in chapels. Ec- 
clesiastically as politically he believed in self-govern- 
ment, and his aim always was to establish churches 
which should at the earliest possible moment be made 
independent and allowed to control their own affairs. 
In the sixties and seventies quite a village developed 
in the neighborhood of 110th Street, owing to the 
fact that this street was at an early date opened across 
to 8th Avenue and Harlem. Enterprising builders 
lined it on both sides with little wooden houses, which 
were occupied by plain artisans, while on the neigh- 
boring streets and lanes, not yet cut through, de- 
veloped a population of inferior grade. In course 
of time the character of this population changed, 
the fairly well-to-do artisans giving way to a poorer 
population largely Roman Catholic. Finally, about 
1880, 110th Street became the slums of Bloomingdale, 
and a Sunday rarely passed when the police were 
not called out to quell some disturbance or to gather 
up the injured. It had become a field for mission work. 
tn the meantime the population in the immediate 
neighborhood of St. Michael’s had grown so large that 
Dr. Peters felt that it would be necessary to create a 
new parish to the north. Accordingly, in 1884 he 
detailed his son, who was then his assistant, to secure 


One More Church 325 


a hall in that neighborhood and commence holding 
services there. Probably fortunately, because of the 
immediate proximity of the Cathedral, whose erection, 
however, seemed at that time in the very far distant 
future, no hall could be obtained. About that time 
also the improvement of Harlem Commons began to 
attract people to the neighborhood east of Morning- 
side Park and north of r1oth Street, and it soon became 
clear that a church was much more needed there 
than on roth Street. To this region, therefore, 
Dr. Peters turned his attention, with the view of 
founding probably the last hive which would ever 
swarm from St. Michael’s, the Church of the Archangel. 
But the story of this work and of his New Jersey 
mission is told elsewhere. 

Dr. Peters’s remarkable success as an administrator 
led to many demands upon him, both private and 
public. It was very difficult for him to refuse to do 
any work which was offered to him. People whose 
private affairs were in confusion applied to him for 
assistance and it was astonishing to those who had to 
deal with his affairs after his death to realize how many 
people he had advised and assisted. He was sought 
also for the boards of all sorts of organizations and 
institutions of benevolent character. Owing to the 
confidence felt in his administration by the public, his 
help was also sought by institutions which had fallen 
into difficulty. 

In 1873 the House of Rest for Consumptives, the 
first hospital of its kind I believe in the country, was 
established at Tremont in a very modest way. Its 
trustees found themselves unable to interest the public 
in the work and finally, after struggling for some years 
to maintain the institution, they turned to Dr. Peters 


326 Annals of St. Michael’s 


for help. Among the trustees were some who had 
assisted him from the outset in the work of the Shelter- 
ing Arms, the City Mission and elsewhere, a bond 
which in his judgment created an obligation on his 
part, so that he felt himself obliged to accede to their 
request, and in 1876 he became president of the House 
of Rest for Consumptives, a position which he continued 
to hold until the day of his death. 

In the following year, in order to save them from 
utter ruin, he was obliged to accept the charge of the 
Children’s Fold and Shepherd’s Fold. They were 
originally established by the Rev. Mr. Cowley, one of 
the missionaries of the City Mission on the Island, to 
care for children who were city charges. It was 
the usage of the city in those days to commit children to 
institutions or to the care of individuals and pay a cer- 
tain sum for their keep. The Roman Catholics had 
taken full advantage of this, but no proper provision 
had been made for the care of Protestant children com- 
mitted by the city. With the help of a number of 
benevolent gentlemen interested in the City Mission 
Mr. Cowley organized and incorporated these two 
institutions to receive and care for Protestant children 
committed by the city, it being calculated that the 
city grant could be made to pay at least the larger 
part of the expenses of such an institution. Having 
established the institutions and secured the grant 
which he desired, Mr. Cowley mismanaged them to 
such an extent that he was finally prosecuted for 
cruelty to children and sentenced to a year in the 
penitentiary.! 


1It is a strange comment on the attitude of the clerical mind 
toward evil doing by a clergyman that, in spite of this conviction 
for a criminal offence, a committee of five clergymen, to whom was 


Mount Minturn 327 


In this emergency of their institutions, some of the 
trustees called on Dr. Peters for assistance and after 
a legal battle both the Shepherd’s and the Children’s 
Fold were rescued from Mr. Cowley’s hands and Dr. 
Peters became their president. For a number of years 
the children of these institutions were housed in build- 
ings in the neighborhood of St. Michael’s Church or 
distributed among families especially selected for the 
purpose, Dr. Peters giving his personal care and at- 
tention to the well-being of every child. As the city 
encroached more and more he secured a large tract of 
land at Elmsford on the Northern Railroad, which he 
named Mt. Minturn, and here he undertook to estab- 
lish a benevolent colony. It was his plan to retain the 
Sheltering Arms as a central city station and a place for 
the care of children who must be kept in close touch 
with parents, or whose stay in the institution was ex- 
pected to be short, but to care for the greater number 
of the children of all his institutions in the country, 
housing them in separate cottages, each of which 
should be a realhome. He proposed also to so arrange 
that the city parishes might place colonies of children 
or even adults at Mt. Minturn, paying a ground rental 
and a charge for water, light, etc., which would greatly 
reduce the expense for all. 

At the time of his death, he had so far perfected his 
plans, that the boys of both the Children’s and the 
Shepherd’s Fold had been transferred to cottages built 
for them at Mt. Minturn. His scheme was a magnifi- 


entrusted by the Diocese the question of an ecclesiastical prose- 
cution, reported that Mr. Cowley had done nothing which would 
justify trial or punishment by the Church. Therefore, to the day 
of his death, although convicted of criminal cruelty toward little 
children, he remained a priest in good standing in the church. 


328 Annals of St. Michael’s 


cent one, and one which, had he lived, he would doubt- 
less have carried to success, but no one else had the 
faith or courage to undertake it. For some years the 
boys of the two folds continued to live at Mt. Minturn, 
but Dr. Peters’s other plans for the place were not 
carried out. At last, the city having largely dimin- 
ished its appropriation under the new State law, the 
whole plant was sold, the Mt. Minturn work aban- 
doned, and the Children’s and Shepherd’s Folds merged 
in the Sheltering Arms, which was continued at the old 
site and on the old plan. 

Reference has been made elsewhere to the confidence 
in Dr. Peters’s administrative ability displayed by the 
city authorities, which led them to make him for some 
time the almoner of city funds for out-door relief. 

It would seem as though, with this immense amount 
of outside works on his hands, each one of which seemed 
to be sufficient to absorb all the strength and time of 
one individual, there would have been no time left 
for parochial work; and yet those who lived under Dr. 
Peters’s parochial administrations never felt that they 
or their needs were neglected. He never seemed to 
be in a hurry, he always seemed to have time to meet 
everyone and converse with everyone; to call on the 
sick, to make the acquaintance of the children of his 
parishioners, to comfort and console the afflicted. 
And not only that: he was pastor to a great host of those 
who rarely or never entered a church, but who always 
sent for him in any sickness, need, or trouble. Of 
course to accomplish this work it was necessary that 
he should give all his strength and time to it. He 
did not believe it right for him to take long vacations, 
as is the custom of city rectors, and even of some 
suburban rectors at the present day. A little trip of 


Writer and Speaker 329 


two weeks, or a month, at the outside was his conception 
of a holiday. Twice in his ministry he accepted a 
long leave of absence, when even his robust health 
threatened to yield under the strain of work, namely, 
in 1874, when he spent a number of months on the 
Pacific coast, and in 1883, when he received a ten 
months’ leave of absence to go around the world with 
his brother. He showed himself then the same keen 
and observant traveler asin his earlier years. His letters 
to the Sheltering Arms and the children of St. Michael’s 
Sunday School made them sharers in the joy of his 
travel. He studied carefully the Japanese prison 
system and prepared a paper for the Prison Asso- 
ciation, of which he was one of the active members. 
Other shorter tours he took also on his ordinary vaca- 
tions, visiting most parts of this country, Canada and 
the West Indies. Once in 1881 he went to Europe to 
marry his son. 

Dr. Peters was not in any sense a great preacher. 
He was a thoughtful, intellectual, highly cultivated 
man, but neither an orator nor a writer. In 1867 he is 
described as having “a pleasing delivery,” and speaking 
every word with full and understandable accent.” 
The same writer also describes him as “exceedingly 
modest”? but “intensely persevering,’’ with a “‘judg- 
ment thoroughly reliable” and “ways of working very 
quiet.’’! 

He distrusted always his command of the pen and 
used to turn to Dr. Montgomery and other of his friends 
to cast into better language his reports of work of the 
City Mission, the Sheltering Arms, and the like. 
He was always a growing man, however, and the 
sermons of the last years of his life were far superior 


1 The Northender. 


330 Annals of St. Michael’s 


both in matter and delivery to those preached in early 
years. Sometimes in the latter years, when he cast 
aside his manuscript and spoke without notes, he took 
fire and became almost eloquent. He never was afraid 
of a new thought, and kept abreast of what the world 
was thinking and doing. For this reason he was counted 
by many a Broad Churchman, and he was a Broad 
Churchman in the sense of his Catholicity and modern- 
ness of thought. 

in the earlier time, before he was finally overwhelmed 
by the multiplicity of his practical duties, he dreamed 
of writing a book which he called Progress in Creation, 
and for that he gathered notes. He also collected, 
apparently with a view to ultimate publication, a mass 
of notes on liturgies, a subject in which he was deeply 
interested. His lines of thought, like his tastes in 
literature, were both Catholic and unexpected. Besides 
these fragmentary notes he left quite extensive but 
very personal journals of his travels, a few stories and 
descriptions published in The Sheltering Arms Paper, 
and a couple of printed sermons and addresses. 

It is not easy for a son to write impartially an esti- 
mate of his father’s life and work. I have tried to 
sketch his manifold activities and through them depict 
the character of the man. Let me sum up the record 
by quoting from the memorial sermon preached in this 
church shortly after his death, by the Rev. Arthur 
Brooks, D.D.: 


It was a rectorate which had more than its length to make 
it remarkable; in fact it was long, because it was so rich. 
There could be nothing to tempt a man to change his parish 
when he was large-minded enough to see all the possibilities 
of the future, and to anticipate them with eagerness and 
fertility of resource, and to rejoice in the thought and antici- 


A Catholic Man 331 


pation of the crop while he was yet placing the seed in the 
ground. It wasa rectorate of which others would not tire, 
since he himself was the one to anticipate each new emer- 
gency and to lead his people into new duties when he was 
seventy years old, just as he did at thirty. As the field 
grew, the man grew, and rooted himself more deeply, and 
showed no signs of decay at root or at top. He founded 
new churches and was anxious that every want of a grow- 
ing church should be met rather than that he or his parish 
should retain all its dignities or privileges. And yet with 
all this view of the future, he prepared for it by always liv- 
ing in the present. He was the father of his people in all 
their interests; he saw the children’s children come forward 
to fill the places of fathers and grandfathers and he knew 
them all by name. He added to the duties of a scattered 
and ever-growing parish, services at asylums and institu- 
tions which were in his neighborhood, saying, as he once 
did to me, that such services carried to where the people 
really needed and could use them seemed to him truer work 
than to hold them where and when the people could not 
come. And out of that work for the neglected, the des- 
titute, and the demented grew first the Mission to Public 
Institutions and then that noble work of the City Mission 
Society by reason of which our Church stands foremost in 
going after that which is lost until it is found. He pitied 
the wretchedness and destitution of the poor in the sad hour 
of bereavement, and by the establishment of St. Michael’s 
Cemetery gave comfort to a host of mourning souls, and a 
resting place to the Church’s dead. He was the parish 
minister in the sense of the word “‘parish”’ which means the 
ground about one’s home, and he was the parish minister 
in the old ecclesiastical sense which refers it to nothing less 
than the dimensions of a diocese. He worked at home with 
a diligence and thoroughness which overlooked no details. 
He illustrated the true character of the parish system, not 
as an embodiment of selfishness, but as the possession of a 
fixed point of responsibility and influence from which 


332 Annals of St. Michael’s 

effort could diverge unlimitedly in every direction. And 
as he worked thus, the whole world became his home and 
his parish. 

Perhaps no feature of Dr. Peters’s life is more interesting 
than his relation to the currents of thought which, while 
he labored here, swept over the Church and the country. 
In his early ministry he felt the influences of the Oxford 
movement, and at once took not only many of its doctrinal 
positions, but especially and most notably all that it could 
give him for assistance in his work. Elaborated ritual, 
multiplied services, sisterhoods, free churches, all these 
were features in his ministry, with the desire of reaching a 
larger number of souls and of attracting attention to the 
Church’s position and work in the community. Many 
features of Church life which are now familiar, or were long 
ago left behind by new developments with which Dr. 
Peters could not keep pace, were first in use in what was 
then the little known and obscure parish of St. Michael’s. 
But closely connected, both in time and character, with 
this movement in the theological world came another— 
that which was identified with the names of Arnold and of 
Stanley, and with the school of large sympathy with new 
methods of investigation and statement; and the advantages 
which all such thought promised Dr. Peters also perceived 
and claimed for his own use. He rejoiced, even when he 
could not sympathize, with men who found a new method of 
approach for divine truth to the minds of their brethren, 
and the career and words of men who alarmed others gave 
him satisfaction as they advanced the Lord’s cause. 

And not only theological thought and investigation, but 
the enlarged scientific knowledge of the day commanded 
his deepest interest. His reading on the street cars, as he 
went back and forth on his ceaseless activity and unnum- 
bered errands of love and mercy, was the periodical entitled 
Nature, and it surprised his fellow clergy, who understood 
little of the working of his mind when he presented for 
their consideration comments on scientific progress, rather 


Achievement in Charity 333 


than details of Church work or discussion of theological 
statements. 

This was the depth of Dr. Peters’s thought and nature. 
As then we turn to his achievements of charity and of 
philanthropy, which are the wonder and admiration of 
men to-day, we cannot be surprised when we find them 
not spasmodic efforts or temporary outbursts of feeling. 
This man who was moved by the sight, which all other 
passers-by neglected, of the blind child weeping on the 
steps of the City Hall, to begin a work for children which is 
the glory of New York to-day, once told me that he dis- 
trusted the use of that word “feeling,” and avoided it 
whenever he was able to do so. He saw the need of our 
growing city and our developing civilization with its mul- 
titudes of bright but destitute children; it stirred him to 
his depths, just as by the use of that mysterious word 
which no one is able fully to translate, St. John tells us that 
Jesus was moved with indignation at the grave of Lazarus, 
and every faculty of body, mind and spirit responded to 
the call; intellect and activity were all there as well as 
feeling. And so he laid his plans deep and broad; he 
founded the Sheltering Arms; he rescued from misuse the 
public appropriations for the Children’s Fold and the 
Shepherd’s Fold, and gave those institutions a new exist- 
ence; he reorganized the failing Home for Consumptives; 
he reinvigorated the City Mission Society, which, with 
good intentions but little knowledge, had hitherto accom- 
plished little for the growing missionary demands of this 
great city; he enlisted the assistance of rectors and parishes, 
and when, partly as the result of the very impulse which he 
had given, those very parishes became absorbed in their 
own growing work, he gathered together devoted laymen 
from all parishes, and utilized for his purposes material 
which otherwise would have lain idle. He calmly proposed 
great undertakings which appalled younger hearts and 
made the enterprising men of New York tremble. He took 
the breath of other men away very often, but always kept 


— 


334 Annals of St. Michael’s 


his own breath. He saw those enterprises which he had 
begun accomplished, only to come forward with some new 
plan, the result of the former, the outgrowth of their success, 
the sequel to’ their wisdom, and still more worthy of this 
great metropolis as a field of Christian work. 

The wide parochialism of Dr. Peters went beyond the 
limits of the city in which he lived, wherever the Church 
which he loved was called to labor. The diocese and its 
welfare he endeavored to assist and strengthen by his 
strong advocacy of division. At one of the Church Con- 
gresses he pleaded for proportionate representation of all 
the dioceses in the General Convention, and the last of his 
many and extended foreign tours produced a discussion 
upon Foreign Missions which was full of helpful suggestions. 
It was impossible for any one person to agree with a man 
who made himself felt in so many fields and whose views 
were so decided on all practical points, and who so _per- 
sistently held to a purpose when his mind was made up 
upon it. But he was the most modest of men, seeking 
advice from men frequently far younger and less experienced 
than himself, and friendship was never broken by difference 
of opinion. 

Among those who stood close to him in fellowship of 
work and in deepest affection were men of the most diverse 
opinion, and from them all he was ready for every remon- 
strance and criticism. 

In the midst of all these activities and interests who of 
us have not envied the calm, quiet demeanor, the steady 
perseverance, the perfect courtesy, the unfaltering faith, 
the devoted attention to details which never wearied or 
obscured the hold upon large principles. Doubtless, his 
natural temperament, which tended to earnestness rather 
than enthusiasm, was behind it all; but back of that tem- 
perament, interpreting it, vitalizing it, inspiring it, was the 
calm, unshaken faith in God and in the Gospel of the In- 
carnate Christ. He never doubted of the victory of truth 
and of good. He could labor and could wait, he could 


Profound Faith 335 


undertake all desperate undertakings, say all unpopular 
things, receive truths of most varied character, because the 
Master of all thought and action was with him and he ever 
felt about him the presence of Him ‘“‘who reacheth from 
one end to another mightily, and sweetly ordereth all 
things.” It was here that the power of his life lay for men 
of other characters and other pursuits. The strength that 
belonged to him never came from what he did or what he 
was; it lay in that living energy and wisdom behind the 
man which never let one particle of power, of inherited 
strength, of acquired equipment, of natural energy and 
wisdom remain unused or purposeless, but sent them for- 
ward in the service of God and of Christ and of the Church, 
without a moment of hesitation or of doubt. That uni- 
versal power he gave to men in his example, and in all the 
contact of his life, for he told them of the power of his 
Master and of theirs. On every side have been felt the 
beauty and the appropriateness of that death which was 
given him, for it does often seem as if God delighted to send 
for His servants just the chariot which suited their lives 
and natures best when He would take them to Himself. 
Calmly he died as he lived—not at home, but while doing 
the errands of the Lord, seeking the scattered sheep, the 
country congregation, the children in a summer home, 
but among friends, as he always was, he found the entrance 
to that road of larger service on which his feet now move 
beyond our sight. 


He died engaged in works of mercy. On a very 
hot Saturday in August, 1893, as usual at his post, 
while others took their vacations, he went up to in- 
spect Mt. Minturn, and, after spending the afternoon 
there, was driven over to Tarrytown, from which 
place he took the train to Peekskill, where he was 
wont every year to go and preach ina little mission 
in which his friend, Mr. Field, was interested. He sat 
late on the piazza of Mr. Field’s house, enjoying the cool 


336 Annals of St. Michael’s 


air from the river and then went to a house across the 
street, where he was to spend the night. In the morn- 
ing he was found dead, lying peacefully, as he was wont 
to sleep, on his side, his face on the palm of his hand. 
The news reached the church just as the morning serv- 
ice was about to begin. 

Dr. Peters’s funeral attested the love of the congre- 
gation for their rector. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew 
kept watch with the body in the church all night. 
Bishop Coleman of Delaware celebrated early Com- 
munion for the family and immediate friends. At the 
funeral service proper Bishop Potter officiated, as- 
sisted by many of the clergy. The church was decked 
with flowers. The chimes rang out the glad hymns 
which Dr. Peters loved, and the choir sang the songs 
of triumph of the saints. There was no sign or 
symbol of the mourning, which with his firm belief in 
immortality and the nearness of the next world he so 
abhorred for himself and others. The church itself 
was packed with great crowds, especially of the poor 
people of the neighborhood, without distinction of 
creed. Bishop Seymour accompanied the body to the 
grave, and said the committal there, just as the sun 
was sinking to its rest. He was buried in St. Michael’s 
Cemetery, which he himself had founded, in death not 
divided from those for whom he had labored. 

His great outward memorials are St. Michael’s Ceme- 
tery, the Sheltering Arms, the City Mission, and this 
Church. Here his family erected in his memory an 
altar bearing this inscription: 


To the Glory of God 
and 
In Memory of 
Tuomas McC.Lure PETERS, Priest. 


Memorials 337 


As a further memorial the Parish House was erected 
the first half by subscription of the congregation and 
friends, the second half by his eldest son. On the 
front, above the door, stands the inscription: 


St. Michael’s 
Parish House 
To the Service of God 
In Memory of 
Tuomas McCLureE PETERS 
Rector 1858-1893 


A wife and eleven children survived him. Mrs. 
Peters had been his helpmeet in the parish work. In 
her father’s rectorship, when she was a child of four- 
teen, so small that her feet could not reach the pedals, 
she commenced to play the organ in the first church. 
From that time to the day of her death she worked 
with her father and her husband in parochial work. She 
died December 28, 1905. Inthe Chapel of the Angels 
is a window given as a memorial by the women of the 
parish. The subject chosen for the window was St. 
Cecilia, in recognition of Mrs. Peters’s relation to the 
music of the parish. The tablet beneath the window 
bears this inscription: 


To the Glory of God, 
In Loving Memory of 
AuicE CLARISSA RICHMOND PETERS 
Daughter, Wife, Mother of three successive Rectors. 
Her life was an inspiration to them 
and to the parish. 


Dr. Peters’s second son succeeded him as rector of 
the parish. His eldest son has been a warden of the 
church and treasurer since 1874. One of his daughters, 


338 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Miss Julia Peters, who was his secretary and assistant 
during his lifetime, has since his death been the 
Parish Visitor, entrusted with the administration of 
the charity funds and the work among the poor. 
Others of his children are still parishioners and workers 
in the parish. 


NOTE.—REportT oF Dr. PETERS TO THE TRUSTEES OF THE 
SHELTERING ARMS IN THE MATTER OF THE SISTERS. 


GENTLEMEN: 

Having been requested by the Executive Committee 
to lay before the Trustees at their Annual Meeting the his- 
tory of the connection of the Sisters of St. Mary with 
“The Sheltering Arms,” I beg leave to offer to the Board 
the following report, including my thoughts and motives, 
subject to the inaccuracies attendant upon every effort 
which rests in great degree upon human memory. 

A twenty-years’ connection with Public Institutions has 
necessarily revealed to me much of the internal manage- 
ment of these establishments. It could not escape the eye 
of a constant visitor that in our Charitable Institutions 
there is with some favorable exceptions nothing homelike 
and attractive, little that is refining or civilizing, much of 
selfishness and neglect. The difficulty of procuring Matrons 
and female assistants who are honest, temperate, and 
conscientious in the discharge of duty has been discourag- 
ing to managing boards and in one case at least defeated 
the attempt to found a new and needed charity. Embar- 
rassments of the kind referred to interfered with the growth 
and usefulness of Mrs. Richmond’s House of Mercy, beget- 
ting even in the mind of that determined woman apprehen- 
sion lest her efforts should finally fail owing to the want of 
proper persons to conduct the internal affairs of the House. 

In the summer of 1863 it was suggested that the Sisters 
who had recently left St. Luke’s Hospital might perhaps 
take charge both of the House of Mercy and of some 


Commission on Sisterhoods 339 


departments in another Charity in which I was interested. 
Two of the Sisters called on me and so far as concerned 
the House of Mercy preliminary negotiations were left to 
me the first Rector of this City to take the unemployed 
ladies by the hand and introduce them again to work; the 
result being that upon nearly their own terms the House 
of Mercy was delivered over to their charge. 

Desiring to have the Sisters officially acknowledged and 
established upon a firm foundation, I suggested to the 
Bishop the appointment of a committee of clergymen to 
consider the subject, and this proposition being approved 
by the Bishop, at his desire I named to him all the clergy 
excepting myself who acted on the commission. ‘These 
gentlemen were the present Bishops of Western New York 
and Long Island, also Drs. Tuttle and Dix; the Bishop 
doing me the honor to include me among the number: 
A report was made by this Committee to the Bishop in 
reply to a series of written questions from him. The 
Bishop decided to recognize and organize the Sisterhood 
of Saint Mary and in my own Church of St. Michael in 
the City of New York it was inaugurated with five members. 

This short sketch of history will make manifest the early 
and active interest taken by me in the formation, recog- 
nition, and work of the Sisters. 

The order and good management introduced by these 
devoted ladies into the House of Mercy led me to the con- 
clusion that could such superintendence be everywhere 
secured the common evils of our Charities would cease to 
exist. Early in the year 1864 a new want presented itself, 
which was of an Asylum for children temporarily homeless. 
Upon consulting the Sisters it appeared that the present 
Superior of the Sisterhood had already revolved in her 
own mind the subject of an Institution for children on the 
broadest platform. She had thought that such an Institu- 
tion ought not to be what is termed denominational, but 
that it should be left free of access for religious teaching 
to all Protestant ministers and thus the interest and support 


340 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of the whole community be assured. Long observation 
had convinced me that whatever advantages might attend 
this system were more than counterbalanced by the ill 
effects upon the children themselves, and that if intended 
as a home the inmates should as in any family home have a 
defined Church connection and pastoral care. 

The assistance of persons not of our own Church was 
asked and received but with the distinct understanding 
that the children should be trained according to the usages 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Upon these considera- 
tions a few persons not Episcopalians entered the Board of 
Trustees and the Ladies’ Association, and numerous con- 
tributions have every year been sent in by increasing 
numbers of the charitable with little regard to religious 
connection. One of the five-thousand-dollar donations 
for the cottages was from a well-known member of All 
Souls Church under care of Dr. Bellows, Unitarian. 

The Sisters accepted the internal management of the 
Institution, readily waiving their own wishes, and carrying 
out the intention of the Trustees. The apartments 
necessary for the accommodation of the Sisters were placed 
under their own control and not subject to visitation as 
part of the Institution by the Trustees. To the rooms 
occupied by them was added eighteen months later a room 
to be fitted up by themselves at their own expense and 
used as an oratory. While Sisters of the Holy Com- 
munion they had been allowed for their private devotions 
a room called by the same name, and it seemed a reason- 
able request which the President took upon himself to 
erant. I have from the first regarded all the apartments 
assigned to the Sisters as entirely their own as though 
they lived in a neighboring house and came to the Shelter- 
ing Arms to do their work. 

The Sisters having, as already stated, yielded their own 
preferences have ever faithfully fulfilled their part. The 
changes in theological views, costume, and devotional 
usages never in any way interfered with their training of 


Separate Institutions 341 


the children, which has continued according to the original 
agreement. 

The first thought which I can now recal! of a separation 
of the Sisters from the Institution arose after a conversa- 
tion with the Superior in the year 1867. It was given as 
her opinion that the Sisters ought to have Institutions of 
their own, in which opinion for the solid and permanent 
establishing of the Sisterhood itself I could not but agree. 
In some other important points, one of which was the 
main object of founding Sisterhoods, there had arisen 
between us at that time a divergence of sentiment. In 
revolving over the whole subject in my mind there arose 
the unwelcome shadow of a possible departure of the Sister- 
hood from The Sheltering Arms. Were they to establish 
their own Institutions, those Institutions under their own 
control, unhampered by Committees and Trustees, would, 
it seemed to me, become necessarily the first interest of the 
Sisters, and certainly none could blame them in leaving 
fields where against their own inclinations they were obliged 
to carry out others’ directions for the free labor of their 
own choice. Again I could not altogether divest myself 
of the apprehension that the divergence of sentiment above 
referred to might as its distant result lead to a separation 
between the Sisters and our Institution. It has been my 
life-long habit in every relation to think out and if in my 
power prepare for every possible contingency. Accord- 
ingly at that time I communicated to a lady, in whose 
capacity I greatly trusted, the uneasy fear possessing me 
and my intention of turning to her in case of extremity. 
To that precaution of two years and more ago we owe the 
ready relief which enabled us to meet the sudden emergency 
of April. A long time after I spoke upon the subject to 
another friend whose assistance I should be glad in any 
difficulty to receive. These acts were, however, prompted 
by no desire to part with the Sisters, but rather like an 
insurance against fire or a life insurance, a safeguard 
against calamity which threatened in an uncertain future. 


342 Annals of St. Michael’s 


At The Sheltering Arms everything pursued its happy 
and prosperous course. At times the Sisters were annoyed 
by observations and questions from visitors regarding their 
dress and usages, but as we could neither refuse admission 
to any one nor direct their thoughts nor control their 
criticisms those annoyances, while exciting our sympathy 
for those subjected to them, seemed in a public Institution 
incurable. 

Early in the present year the Institution was removed 
to its new home in Manhattanville, and at about the same 
time the public attention was drawn towards The Shelter- 
ing Arms in consequence of the proposition to hold a 
Grand Bazaar. 

Owing to the constant presence in the new building of 
workmen engaged in supplying deficiencies which could 
not well be remedied until the building was occupied, the 
promised public reception was not held until two months 
after the removal. The Sisters were worn and harassed 
by extra labor and heavy cares and had little time or 
strength left to devote to visitors. Many came, however, 
and among them not a few attracted by the desire to see 
for themselves how far and how widely circulating rumors 
had foundation and to ask information regarding the 
Sisterhood. So uncomplaining, however, were the Sisters 
under their many grievances that the President first heard 
in town that they were examined and cross-questioned in 
an exceedingly irritating manner by persons who seemed 
to them to have come rather as enemies to the Sisterhood 
than as friends to The Sheltering Arms. Nevertheless 
visitors could not be refused admission; and I accordingly 
recommended as the only possible course for avoiding un- 
pleasant interviews that if every other means failed they 
must leave the reception and showing about of visitors to 
other parties not Sisters residing in the House. 

In the meantime symptoms of the great agitation pre- 
vailing in the City with regard to The Sheltering Arms began 
to make themselves manifest in the numerous questions 


Mistrust of Sisters 343 


proposed, some of which I was unable to answer; in the 
extraordinary and extravagant tales regarding proceedings 
in the Institution, most of which I was able to deny. I 
resolved at that time by word and pen to reply to friends, 
but taking no notice of flying rumors and resisting the 
pressure from newspapers and hostile attacks say and do 
as little as possible, and carefully avoid any course which 
might appear to have been taken under a mercenary desire 
of influencing the receipts of the Bazaar, and let the assist- 
ance which by that means the public might render us 
spring from their confidence in the piety, respectability, and 
honor of this Board. In an article prepared in the middle 
of February for ‘‘The Sheltering Arms Paper” I thus ex- 
pressed myself: ‘‘The list of Trustees is an answer to 
detraction; read over those names, pausing at each to 
recall the character and position of its owner and nothing 
more will be necessary.” I added: “Information regard- 
ing the Institution can always be obtained upon application 
to the President. None asking for it has ever been refused 
or unsatisfied with the reply.” 

During the two months and more preceding the Bazaar 
I was in receipt of many letters to which in every case I 
replied precisely and to the utmost of my knowledge. It 
became soon apparent that the uneasiness regarding the 
state of things at the Institution had taken hold of some of 
its old and firm friends, reaching parties who, because of 
their long and efficient support, were on that account 
entitled to consideration; who from their personal friend- 
ship and attachment to myself had the acknowledged right 
of friends to question and advise. 

The chief cause of mistrust seemed at first to be an im- 
pression that confession was among the obligations of 
members of the Sisterhood. Unable to reply to the ques- 
tion whether this were so, I in February referred a Clergy- 
man asking to the Bishop as Head of the Sisterhood and 
having the approval of its rules. The reported reply was 
that the Bishop would allow nothing of the kind, and on the 


344 Annals of St. Michael’s 


strength of this statement I instantly replied to the charge 
that I believed it untrue. By correspondence and con- 
versation I was busily occupied the next few weeks in 
defending the Sisters so far as regarded their full and faith- 
ful discharge of the duty undertaken towards The Shelter- 
ing Arms. 

As the time for the Bazaar drew nearer the excitement 
became continually more intense and widely spread and 
on the 29th day of March to my surprise there reached 
me by mail a letter of inquiry sent at the desire of the 
President of the Ladies’ Association of Trinity Parish, who 
found her friends growing lukewarm in their labors because 
of adverse reports, there being made particular mention 
of the children’s multiplied prayers and the Sisters’ con- 
fessions. To this letter I returned an answer which was 
printed, I presume by the parties receiving it, in the Church 
Journal and Church Weekly. 

The second day after, viz., March 31st, at evening, I re- 
ceived in behalf of the ladies of the Church of the Heavenly 
Rest a letter much longer and more full written by an old 
and liberal friend of The Sheltering Arms. This letter 
stated that the feeling against The Sheltering Arms was 
growing so strong that the writer feared before the time 
of the Fair should have arrived a large number of those 
who began to work for it would have withdrawn. My 
answer I give here as it replies one by one to specified 
counts, covers more ground than any other communication, 
and illustrates my position regarding the Sisterhood: 

“T have received your favor of this date and gladly reply 
to one who (as well as the Sisters) has been an early and 
constant friend to my Institution. 

‘“‘ Perhaps I did give an undecided answer when speaking 
of the Sisters, because I am not called upon or prepared 
to defend their good taste and good sense in many little 
matters. I believe, however, that their offenses are only 
against those uncertain as to Sisters. I have never 
thought it worth while to notice any fancies pleasing to 


Popish Usages 345 


themselves regarding their inexpensive dress. If they 
paraded around here in silks, satins, and jewelry, or in any 
demoralizing style of costume, as very low necks and short 
sleeves, I might remonstrate. I do not like the dress but 
that is as I said a question, in my view, of taste. They do 
wear a cord and tassel around their waist, indicating, as 
a visitor told me they informed her, that the Sisters were 
bound together in loving accord. 

“They wear crosses, but no bleeding heart. Some of the 
Sisters longest in service have a lily or some other flower 
in silver on the cross. I believe it indicates a grade in the 
Sisterhood. 

“No crucifixes are used in the house, excepting anything 
which may be in the Sisters’ rooms, and there of course I 
do not go and have no knowledge as to their furniture or 
arrangements. The only exceptions as to crucifixes in the 
old house were my own, given to me by a friend, a Presby- 
terian Missionary, who brought it from Jerusalem. It is of 
course dear to me, not only as an emblem of my crucified 
Lord, but also from the gathered recollections of thirty 
years. Sister Sarah saw it and was much pleased. Since 
then she has one of her own. 

“ As to burning candles before either of these crucifixes, 
I believe it to be an utter falsehood. There may be other 
crucifixes, but I know nothing of them. 

‘““As to confession and the children being trained to it, 
they are certainly not trained to conceal their faults, but 
as to any other confession than is common in all families 
and schools, there is none with us. 

“Tf the Sisters go to confession to ‘a mortal priest,’ I am 
not that mortal, and no other clergyman visits or officiates 
here. I cannot say that they do not practise confession 
elsewhere, but I do not believe they do. I do not question 
them about their private affairs, with which I have no 
concern, but I do direct and regulate The Sheltering 
Arms and can reply to all questions involving the teaching 
and training there. 


346 Annals of St. Michael’s 


‘The Sisters have been daily under my observation for 
five years and to them the Institution owes much of its 
success.” 

Then follow some remarks upon the supposed origin of 
the reports and the letter concludes thus: 

“Write as full inquiries as you please and I will answer 
them as farasIcan. If anything is not like me deny it.” 

On the morning of the same day, March 31st, I was waited 
upon by a committee, of which Dr. Morgan was chairman 
and Dr. Montgomery was a member, representing that the 
excitement was so great on account of supposed Popish 
usages at The Sheltering Arms that it was impossible to 
keep the ladies of the various city parishes up to the work, 
that one by one they were dropping off, and that there was 
great danger of the ruin of the Bazaar unless the fever 
could in some way be calmed, stating moreover that they 
thought that to make the Bazaar a success the connection 
of the Sisters with the Institution should be dissolved; 
that written charges had been laid before them which 
could be substantiated and would prove the Sisters disloyal 
to the Church. 

They also placed in my hands a letter signed by one whose 
friendship dates back to the days of boyhood, of another 
whose intimacy with me is older than my ministry, and 
by three other clergymen who had also manifested since 
holding their rectorships the fullest confidence in me and 
had given my various works a hearty and unreserved 
support. I knew well the kindly feeling of all towards me 
and their trust in me, and also their interest in The 
Sheltering Arms. At a public meeting in his Sunday 
School room I had within a few days heard the rector 
of the Church of the Incarnation give an account of his 
recent visit to the Institution and express great pleasure 
with what he had there seen. I fully understood that 
their object in calling upon me was to aid to the utmost 
the Institution of which I was head. 

The letter handed to me was stated to represent the 


Defends the Sisters 347 


opinions of others engaged in sustaining preparations for 
the Bazaar but who were not present when the paper was 
drawn up. A document from such source merited my 
serious attention and received it. It is as follows: 


New York, March 31, 1870. 
Dear Dr. PETERS: 

Some of your personal friends and brother clergymen 
who are warmly interested in the success of the Bazaar for 
“The Sheltering Arms” find themselves very much em- 
barrassed in their work for the Bazaar by certain reports 
affecting the practises and usages of the ‘‘Sisterhood of St. 
Mary” in its relation to ‘‘The Sheltering Arms.” 

Under these circumstances they feel called upon by 
their duty to their Parishioners and to their Church to 
request you to have a thorough investigation made by the 
Trustees of ‘‘The Sheltering Arms” at the earliest possible 
moment; so that the Sisterhood, if found disloyal to the 
doctrines and usages of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
may be required to withdraw from all connection with 
“The Sheltering Arms.” 

Very truly yours, 
(Signed) WituiaM F. Morcan, 
H. E. Montcomery, 
SAMUEL CooKE, 


E. A. WASHBURN, 
H. C. Potrer. 


To the remarks of these gentlemen I replied that in ask- 
ing me to part with the Sisters they were asking too much; 
that the Sisters had made The Sheltering Arms possible; 
that from first to last they had deferred to my wishes in 
everything relating to the training of the children; that as 
my friends I should stand by them, and those gentlemen 
themselves would think meanly of me were I to act other- 
wise; that I believed the charges false; and that, moreover, 
if things were as stated the remedy was of another kind, the 


348 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Bishop being both Visitor of The Sheltering Arms and 
Head of The Sisterhood of St. Mary and in these capaci- 
ties possessed of the power to remove abuses and reform 
irregularities. I also stated that as President of the 
Institution I should demand a copy of the charges referred 
to, intending both on the Sisters’ account and on our own 
to lay it before the Trustees. 
To the letter I made the following reply: 


New York, March 31, 1870. 
GENTLEMEN: 


I have this day received your communication regarding 
the Sisterhood of St. Mary in its relation to The Sheltering 
Arms. I am not unaware of the damaging rumors and 
reports in general circulation, and which I believe to be 
utterly false. 

I shall be glad to promote an investigation which may 
relieve the Institution and the Sisterhood from any im- 
putation of disloyalty to our Church, and do not doubt 
that if the rumors be found correct, the Trustees will 
unanimously resolve to sever the connection between the 
Sisterhood of St. Mary and The Sheltering Arms. I 
will lay your paper before the Trustees at their Annual 
Meeting to be held in May and ask that proper action be 
taken. 

I am, gentlemen, 
Your obedient servant, 
T. M. PETERs. 
President of ‘‘The Sheltering Arms.” 


To the Rev. Wm. F. Morgan 
and the Rev. H. E. Montgomery. 


This letter of the Committee and also the reply were both 
hastily written and I myself took no copy of either, as the 
Committee thought they would probably be printed and 
copies multiplied. I requested copies to be sent me as 
soon as possible in order that I might, as seemed just, send 


Defends the Sisters 349 


word at the earliest day to the Sisters, who ought to be 
informed of the progress of events. 

At my request Dr. Morgan has since written me his 
recollections of the interview detailed above, as follows: 


Easter Even, April 16, 1870. 

My pear Dr. PETERS: 

Upon returning from Church, | find your letter. I have 
a very distinct recollection of all that you said in reference 
to the Sisters, and was much impressed by the high toned 
and honorable manner in which you declared your con- 
fidence in them, your obligations to them, and your deter- 
mination not to do them wrong in any wise, until you had 
sufficient cause. Everything you said on the subject of 
alleged disloyalty to our Church on their part was intended 
to be a shield and explanation for them. Distinctly too I 
remember this declaration falling from you, viz., that the 
Sisters had been true to you, yielding gracefully to your 
wishes and directions, carrying out your plans, and pro- 
moting your influence, and that you would not violate 
your own instincts of gratitude and regard so far as to dis- 
miss them or wound them, unless for a very sufficient reason. 

At the same time you did not deprecate an investigation, 
but rather favored it, being satisfied that the Sisters would 
pass the ordeal without harm. 

I am glad to do you justice in this matter, and I am very 
sure that Dr. Montgomery will endorse all I have written. 

The whole subject has got before the public in a false 
and exaggerated shape. There was no disposition on the 
part of any of the Clergymen who acted in the premises, 
to prejudge the Sisters, or condemn them unheard. Certain 
rumors and written reports were in circulation, calculated 
to damage the Institution and destroy the prospects of 
the Bazaar, and our only object was to get at the truth 
and do what seemed possible to save The Sheltering Arms 
from evil report and the Bazaar from collapse. 

Faithfully your friend and brother, 
Wiiitam F. Morcan. 


350 Annals of St. Michael’s 


It will be readily understood why I was unwilling at that 
time to call a special meeting of the Trustees. To have 
called a meeting of the Board for the purpose of expressing 
confidence in the Sisters would have implied that there 
was reason to doubt their possessing that confidence. To 
have called a meeting regarding the Sisters upon the eve 
of the Bazaar would have been interpreted as aiming by 
our action to influence the receipts of the Bazaar. It 
seemed to me unbecoming and undignified in us to take 
such a step, and that all the public needed to know was 
who are the Trustees, not what action do they propose. 
Moreover I was not disposed to call a meeting of the 
Trustees amidst the commotion then prevailing, because 
it was hardly possible that the subject to be discussed 
should meet with the cool deliberation which it required. 

I next directed my thoughts to the action which the 
Trustees would be likely to take when the subject of the 
Sisterhood and its usages should come before them. 

The charge that the Sisters were disloyal to our Church 
was general and to be proved must rest upon the sustaining 
of other and particular charges. To some of the various 
questions proposed I could give no satisfactory reply, as 
they referred to the rules of the Sisterhood, of which I had 
no copy and which I understood to be known only to full 
members of the Sisterhood or their official ecclesiastical 
superiors. I did not feel that I had any more than any 
other person the right to enquire into matters not relating 
to their connection with The Sheltering Arms, and as they 
were aware that in some of their views and usages my 
sympathies did not go with them I refrained in general 
from asking questions which they might not wish to answer 
and would probably receive as implying on my part an 
adverse criticism. Our intercourse had ever been kindly 
and I desired that it might ever so continue. But further 
I thought and still believe that their attachment to our 
Church was manifest and decided, and neither did nor do 
doubt that they would sacrifice individual preferences or 


Attitude of the Board 351 


abandon cherished practices in obedience to the expressed 
will of the authority of the Church. Some of the remarks 
said to have been made by individual members of the 
Sisterhood I was satisfied had been misunderstood and 
that it would so appear upon full inquiry. 

It was of course impossible to foresee the exact turn 
which matters might take in the Board, but it seemed 
probable, inasmuch as great stress had been laid upon 
certain apparent and other alleged facts regarding costumes 
and devotions, that these points would be brought up 
before the Trustees. After a full consideration of the ob- 
jection to the Sisters’ dress I could not suppose that the 
Trustees would conclude that we had any direction in 
that matter, inasmuch as ladies mature enough to take 
care of our children were of age to regulate their own 
costumes; or that if the Trustees should see fit to enter 
into further inquiries regarding the habit they would dis- 
cover heresy in a cord more than in a belt, or anything 
worse than bad taste in preferring one style of collar to 
another. 

With regard to the private devotional usages of the 
Sisters, even if the statement regarding confession proved 
true, it also seemed to me that the Trustees would not place 
themselves in the awkward position of passing sentence 
upon the Sisters on those accounts, because by such action 
they would commit themselves to an inquisitorial course 
in which neither their own judgment nor the public could 
long sustain them. If we claimed the right of regulating 
the Sisters’ devotions when by themselves, we might with 
as good reason direct their bedside or closet prayers. And 
if because of such interference the Sisters were to leave 
us, as they certainly would, then we should be under the 
necessity of including it among the qualifications of persons 
employed in the Institution that they should never say 
their prayers with their faces on the floor and not be allowed 
at their desire to go to confession. And further, if for any 
such reasons as these we were to wish the Sisters to leave 


352 Annals of St. Michael’s 


their charge, it would be not because they were not faithful 
in their care of the children and true to their agreement 
with us, but because they had, since undertaking our work, 
adopted some private religious practises contrary to our 
own views of what was expedient and right. And this 
would leave us not only under the necessity of examining 
upon these points all who might hereafter be proposed for the 
charge of the House, but, inasmuch as our next ladies would 
be as liable to change as our late Sisters, we should also com- 
mit ourselves to a system of occasional or periodical investi- 
gation as to the orthodoxy and devotional customs of all in 
responsible position in the Institution. In fine, the em- 
barrassments in which we should be involved were we to 
take up this question of the private religious exercises of 
the ladies are so overwhelming that it seemed to me the 
only course possible for the Trustees would be to pass this 
subject altogether by and enter upon inquiry as to how they 
were doing our work, for which alone they were responsible 
to the Executive Committee. As to their thoroughness 
and faithfulness in this relation there could be but one 
. mind. And as I could, moreover, from intimate personal 
acquaintance with the Sister in charge of The Sheltering 
Arms and also with her occasional substitute, testify that 
they had always manifested the most simple and profound 
love to Christ and desire to serve and honor Him, there 
seemed thus far little room to anticipate condemnatory 
action by this Board. 

Upon one other cause of complaint against the Sisters 
I did not feel the same confidence that this Board would 
take my view, namely the fitting up of the Sisters’ Oratory- 
My own ground with regard to this Oratory had been, as 
already stated, that in crossing its threshold the ladies were 
in the privacy of their own apartments and beyond the 
control of this Board and its committees. I had myself, 
in compliance with the wish of the Sisters, celebrated the 
Holy Communion in the Oratory of the old building at times 
when it was for some reason inconvenient to hold the 


The Oratory 353 


service in Church. The arrangements had never disturbed 
my devotions, although I cannot but look upon the peace 
and unity of the Church as the great desire of true Christians, 
calling for an entire abnegation of self, and not for a mo- 
ment to be imperilled by following out pleasing fancies or 
personal inclinations in self gratification. It was the 
Sisters’ Oratory, however, and not my church or chapel. 
No servant or child in the Institution took part in the 
services or so far as I know had ever entered them. With 
regard to the Oratory in the new building, I had never been 
in it since the building was occupied nor asked when it 
would be in order or how arranged. I thought it, however, 
possible that the Board might consider itself bound to 
know the contents and regulate the arrangements of any 
room beneath our roof, or that if the Sisters were to be left 
entirely free in their sleeping chambers a room for devo- 
tional purposes would be one for whose appearance and 
proprieties we should be held accountable. It had been 
once intimated to me on the part of the Sisterhood that 
any restrictions upon their Oratory arrangements would 
be considered sufficient cause for leaving The Sheltering 
Arms. Desiring to avoid a collision which would lead 
to the departure of these ladies, I spoke one day to the 
Head Sister of The Sheltering Arms words of this import: 
“Can you not add one to the many sacrifices you have made 
fer my work by omitting from the Oratory which you are 
now fitting up all that is offensive to the eye.”” The reply 
was: “I should think that people might leave us at least 
that little corner of the world to ourselves.”’ I thought 
so too and in pursuance of my stipulation with the Sisters 
would say nothing further. 

Being still disturbed in mind as to what might occur with 
regard to the Oratory, I decided, after some days, to make 
one more trial and procure through the recommendation 
of Dr. Dix, as Pastor of the Sisterhood, that which I could 
not by my own agreement require and did not feel disposed 
further to request. Accordingly on the 5th of April I went 


354 Annals of St. Michael’s 


to town for the sole purpose of seeing Dr. Dix, and upon 
this only subject. Finding Dr. Dix at his office, I asked him 
as Pastor of the Sisterhood to go out to The Sheltering Arms, 
new building before the reception and advise the Sisters 
from that day to omit from their Oratory whatever might 
be offensive to any of our friends. In this mission I believe 
I failed. Another subject was introduced by Dr. Dix, who 
referred toa letter written by him (not then received by me) 
in which he desired to know if the Trustees had an inten- 
tion after the Bazaar was over of dispensing with the 
services of the Sisters of Saint Mary. In reply I said that 
it was upwards of two years since the subject of the Sister- 
hood had been up in our Board, that the Sisters had always 
been sustained, the only dissenting member having resigned 
in consequence; that the subject of the Sisterhood in re- 
lation to The Sheltering Arms would come up at our annual 
meeting in May, because as President I had been officially 
addressed by a Committee of City Clergy on their account, 
that while I could not guarantee the action of 20 men upon 
a subject two years at rest I felt quite easy as to the result. 
Feeling that it might not be honest in me when the topic 
was thus introduced to withhold any thought which I had 
bearing upon it, and that upon my return home I should feel 
that I ought to have opened my mind more fully to the 
Pastor of the Sisters, I added with the utmost frankness, and 
speaking as a devoted friend of the Sisterhood from the 
beginning and considering their interests as separate from 
my own, that in my judgment the Sisters would never be 
in their right position until they had their own Institu- 
tions and were not subject to inspection and examinations 
by Trustees; that while I thought it very good in the 
Sisters to endure patiently all they had borne for The 
Sheltering Arms’ sake, yet that I did not think it was in 
human nature to continue it forever, that I had more than 
once said, in advising them as I would my own sister, my 
counsel would be to give up a position so full of unpleasant- 
ness, adding that it was ever my habit to provide for any 


Answer to Dr. Dix 355 


possible contingency, and that for more than two years I 
had made provision in case the departure of the sis- 
ters should at any time occur. Dr. Dix has at my 
request given me his recollections of that conversation as 
follows: 

“The impression left on my mind by that conversation 
was, that the position of the Sisters at The Sheltering 
Arms was precarious; that you looked to separation, and 
had long been prepared for it; and that, in your judgment, 
as well as in my own, the Sisters would work to much 
better advantage in Institutions belonging entirely to them. 
You did not say, however, that you wished them to leave; 
yet I think you said, or implied, that you thought it would 
be better for them to do so, on their own account, though 
not, of course, at the present time. 

““T wrote you on the 3rd of April [the letter which I 
had not then received] with a view to ascertain whether 
the Sisters might be expected to remain permanently in 
charge of The Sheltering Arms. The result of the conversa- 
tion was to satisfy me that you anticipated separation 
and thought it probable, in view of the extreme violence of 
expressions used by an influential member of the Board, 
and his representations to the Bishop, that the separation 
might come sooner than you expected or desired. This 
was what all parties wished to know; the enemies of the 
Sisters, lest they should be aiding an Institution in which 
those obnoxious persons served; their friends, lest they 
should be giving to an Institution presently to undergo a 
change in its internal management which they must disap- 
prove. The Sisters were placed in a position in which the 
only course consistent with self-respect seemed to be the 
one which they took.” 

Returning home from this interview I found the letter 
of Dr. Dix, to which, so far as related to the action of the 
Trustees in reference to the Sisters, I replied in these 
words: 

“T found upon my return home your letter, which I have 


356 Annals of St. Michael's 


twice carefully read. I do not know that I can add in 
force to what I said to-day, namely that I am quiet in 
mind and easy as to the result of present attacks. At the 
same time there are more reasons than one why I must not 
and cannot be forced to say much.” 

After some remarks upon an article in the Protestant 
Churchman, to which Dr. Dix in his letter had referred, 
and which I looked upon as hostile because the churches 
represented by that paper are supporting an Institution 
started in opposition to The Sheltering Arms and were, 
none of them, in the Bazaar, the article being also issued 
when it was too late for others to come in, but not too late 
for any of those already in to withdraw. I concluded 
thus: 

“The only thing in your letter to which I object is the 
suggestion that there can be any such dishonesty on the 
part of the Trustees as to be acting a concealed and double 
part. The subject of the Sisterhood has never been before 
the board since their action of two years ago. When it 
comes up again I believe they will know who are their 
friends and what is their duty and will act fairly. 

“‘T thought the little sacrifice I asked to-day would be of 
great advantage and aid to me.” 

Had it been my intention to counsel the resignation of the 
Sisters my course on a previous occasion would indicate 
that I should take no circuitous means to bring it about. 
When, in 1867, in St. Barnabas’s House, a discussion which 
I thought would be unpleasant to the Sisters and might 
lead to their departure seemed inevitable and close at hand, 
I privately advised them at the close of the year for which 
at our desire they had undertaken the management of the 
house to decline its further charge. 

Had I considered it better for themselves to follow in 
this case the same line of action I should plainly and without 
hesitation have so recommended. On the contrary, as 
questions regarding the Sisters would necessarily arise 
sooner or later in every board of Trustees with which they 


Withdrawal of Sisters 357 


were connected, I thought it better for the Sisters to remain 
at their post and that their relation to the Church and its 
work might as well be decided now and here as in the future 
and elsewhere. 

On Thursday, the day of reception at The Sheltering 
Arms, several of the Sisters were at the Institution and I 
observed nothing to attract attention, with the exception 
of a want of the accustomed cordiality on the part of the 
Superior, leading me to suppose her offended, although the 
cause was unknown. 

On Friday evening, April 8th, I received the following 
communication: 


To THE REVEREND Dr. PETERS, 
President of the Board of Trustees of ‘‘The Sheltering 


Arms.” 
REVEREND SIR, 


The Sisters of St. Mary hear that great agitation and 
criticism prevail on the subject of ‘“‘ The Sheltering Arms,’’ 
and they are informed that it is feared the present effort 
to raise funds may result in failure in consequence of their 
connection with the Institution. 

They have reason to suppose that some of the Trustees 
would feel greatly relieved by the withdrawal of the Sisters, 
and they accordingly resign their charge; the resignation 
to take effect within ten days from date. 

SISTER HARRIET 
Superior, Sisters St. Mary. 


41 West 46th Street. 
April 8, 1870. 


And on Saturday morning, April 9th, I sent to Sister 
Harriet a letter of which this is the copy: 


Broadway and rorst Street. 
Dear SISTER HARRIET, 
Last night’s mail brought in more than its usual share 
of communications friendly and hostile stirred up by The 


358 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Sheltering Arms Bazaar. Among the former class I 
trust that I may ever be able to place letters from Sister 
Harriet. 

It is very true as you say that great excitement prevails. 
I presume it is also true that some of the Trustees do feel 
as you indicate. How many they may be I cannot tell; 
as it is over two years since the subject of the connection 
of the Sisterhood with The Sheltering Arms came before 
the Trustees. I should be surprised and disappointed, 
however, if the Board or upon full discussion any member 
of it fails to see that we owe our success to the care of the 
Sisterhood. To a committee of clergymen, Dr. Morgan 
being Chairman, I replied in words that the Sisterhood had 
made the Institution possible and I could not turn against 
my friends. To the letter brought by the Committee I 
replied also by letter. The communication and re- 
ply would for your information have been sent to 
you had I received the extra copies of them from Dr. 
Morgan. As soon asIcan procure them you shall have 
copies. 

The subject necessarily comes once again before the 
Trustees of ‘‘The Sheltering Arms.” The more I recall 
what you have been to us the fuller is my conviction that 
there can be in the Board but one opinion and one possible 
conclusion. ‘ 

Your communication is also for the Board. When the 
annual meeting occurs in May will be as early as it is possible 
for us fully and calmly to deliberate and act. I do not 
want you to leave now or to have it known that you con- 
template it. Whatever possible gain it might be to our 
treasury does not influence me. Friends are dearer than 
money and cannot be bought. I received by the same 
mail with your favor the name of one who contributed 
$s00 to the Institution two months ago and would now 
like his money back. I shall send it to him and would not, 
to save it, say that you proposed leaving. 

If people will not give from confidence in the Board of 


Friends Dearer than Money 359 


Trustees without reference to details of management, I do 
not think anything will be gained by shifting sail to suit 
every breeze. 

With regard to the Sisters themselves I have long felt 
that their position was a false one and must cease. They 
have been necessarily somewhat, perhaps you will say 
much, restrained and hampered here. But far worse than 
that they have been the object of suspicion, of unkind 
remark, and impertinent curiosity, from which in a public 
Institution we had no power to relieve them. I have said 
more than once that my advice to the Sisters would be, 
go and establish your own Institutions which you can 
control yourselves and in which the public can help or not 
asinclined. This I say not in the interest of my Institution 
but of the Sisterhood. For myself I shall reckon their 
departure a calamity. 

Nevertheless I have for two years foreseen that an ulti- 
mate separation was probable and have thought upon the 
course which it might be necessary to take. It would 
have been short sighted and improvident for me to act 
otherwise. When you withdraw from me to establish 
your own charities I shall not oppose or object. I do not want 
you, however, togoonthe money question. I do not want 
you to withdraw on account of any supposed wish of the 
Trustees, unless you have reasons unknown to me for believ- 
ing that wish to be wider spread among them than I suppose. 

Above all I donot wish you to go ina hurry, and shall say 
nothing about this affair until the matter comes before our 
Board, unless you write me again desiring another course. 

Very respectfully and truly 
T. M. PETERs. 


On Monday, April 11th, I received to my letter this return: 


To THE REVEREND Dr. PETERS. 
REVEREND SIR, 
Yours of April gth is at hand. 
The Sisters of St. Mary will leave “The Sheltering Arms”’ 


360 Annals of St. Michael’s 


on Easter Monday, April 18th, as intimated in my note of 
April 8th. 
SISTER HARRIET 
Superior, Sisters of St. Mary. 
41 West 46th Street, 
April 11th, 1870 


A meeting of the Executive Committee had been called 
that day for another purpose, and before that meeting I 
laid all three of the foregoing papers. 

After some discussion the following resolution was 
adopted and the Committee adjourned to meet on Wednes- 
day, April 13th. 

“Resolved that the Executive Committee of ‘The Shel- 
tering Arms’ has heard with much surprise and regret 
that the ladies in charge of the house have determined to 
resign, and sincerely trust that they will recall the same 
and express fully to the President their reasons for so 
doing.”’ According to the instructions contained in the 
resolution I waited upon the Superior of the Sisters and 
was told that there were no reasons to give beyond those 
contained in the first communications, and that that action 
was final. She however told me before leaving that we 
had failed to protect the Sisters and that I should have 
before called a meeting of the Board of Trustees. This 
report being made to the Executive Committee meeting of 
Wednesday, they decided that it was inexpedient and un- 
necessary to convene the Board, and, accepting the depart- 
ure of the Sisters as inevitable, appointed a Commission of 
three to conduct the House until the meeting of the Board. 

Thus after more than five years of friendly and happy 
relations the connection of the Sisters with The Sheltering 
Arms has been suddenly and unexpectedly severed. Dur- 
ing all of that period they have given us their services free 
of compensation, and introduced a good order and system 
which we shall be fortunate if we can always maintain. 

None so well as he who for almost the whole of that time 
has been daily at the Institution can know the full debt of 


Withdrawal of Sisters 361 


gratitude we owe. None knows so well as he the anxiety 
they have spared us, at what sacrifice often of feeling and 
inclination they have consistently shaped their conduct 
by our desires. 
All of which is respectfully submitted, 
Tuomas M. PETERS, 
President of the Board of Trustees 
of ‘‘The Sheltering Arms.” 
New York, May 9, 1870. 


CHAPTER XIII 


SIXTH RECTOR 


Rev. JOHN PUNNETT PETERS 


1893 


16, 1852, in the house which had originally 

belonged to Garrit Van Horne, one of the found- 
ers of St. Michael’s Church, situated on what is now 
the southwest corner of Broadway and 94th Street. 
He was the second son and third child of Thomas Mc- 
Clure Peters and Alice Clarissa Richmond, his wife. 

He made choice of the ministry in his early childhood, 
primarily to please his father, because he had heard the 
latter express a desire that one of his sons should be 
a clergyman. The choice once made dominated his 
studies and his thoughts from that time forward. He 
was trained first in Church Schools, at Manhattanville 
(where Rev. S. H. Hilliard and Bishop Seymour were 
among his teachers), and the Church of the Transfigura- 
tion in 29th Street. A sickly child, the long daily jour- 
ney to the latter school broke him down entirely, and 
after a year’s rest, when his elder brother, William, 
went to Yale, he was entered in the next to the highest 


class at the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven. 
362 


ie PUNNETT PETERS was born December 


REV. JOHN PUNNETT PETERS 


Sixth Rector, 1893- 


Linguistic Studies 363 


Here he stayed almost a year, and then again broke 
down. The next two years he spent partly in Great 
Barrington, Mass., partly in Bloomingdale, living largely 
an out-of-door life, and pursuing somewhat desultory 
studies by himself and with tutors. He finally entered 
Yale at the age of sixteen, graduating in the class 
of 1873. The General Theological Seminary was then 
distinctly retroactive and obscurantist, a veritable 
house of darkness, and although Dr. Thomas Peters 
was a graduate of the institution and one of its trus- 
tees, and the Dean of the Seminary was his warm friend 
and his son’s former teacher, he preferred that his son 
should not study there. He wished him to learn what 
men were thinking and to think for himself. Young 
Peters was anxious to do special work in linguistics 
in connection with his theological studies. Accordingly, 
with his Bishop’s consent, it was arranged that he 
should pursue graduate studies at Yale, and at the 
same time, partly in the theological school of that 
university and partly by outside reading, prepare him- 
self in theology for his canonical examinations. Peters’s 
original desire was to prepare for work in the foreign 
mission field ; but his own experiences in the study of the 
Old Testament, revealing the almost universal ignorance 
of the actual character and contents of the old Hebrew 
sacred books then prevailing in the Church, convinced 
him that it was his duty to devote himself to the study 
and exposition of those books. For this purpose he 
required a scientific knowledge of Hebrew and the 
cognate languages. It was at that time impossible to 
acquire such knowledge in this country, and in fact 
the scientific study of the Semitic languages anywhere 
left much to be desired. After consultation with the 
best authorities, it seemed desirable that Peters should 


364 Annals of St. Michael’s 


learn the comparative method of language study as 
applied to the Indo-European languages, at the same 
time studying the Semitic languages as far as possible, 
and then later pursue his studies in Semitic languages 
at some foreign university. He made his degree 
of Doctor of Philosophy in course at Yale in 1876, in 
Sanskrit (as major), Greek and Comparative Philology, 
together with Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. During this 
period he had supported himself by private tutoring. 
For the next three years, until 1879, he was a tutor in 
Yale College, teaching Greek and occasionally Latin to 
the Freshman and Sophomore classes, his object in 
accepting that position being both to ground himself 
more fully in knowledge, and also to acquire the means 
to pursue his studies abroad. 

In Peters’s Freshman year in college the Berkeley 
Society was organized, a religious association of 
Church students. Peters took part in the organization 
and development of this Society, and was active in the 
mission work which it organized in the George Street 
Chapel of Trinity Church. Finally, about the time of 
his graduation from college, he found himself at the 
head of a large mission Sunday School at that place. 
He was then called upon to conduct religious services 
in the State Hospital located in New Haven. During 
his post-graduate course and the period of his tutorship 
he was in consequence in charge of a considerable 
mission work, embracing both children and adults, 
involving the holding of at least three services each 
Sunday, together with considerable visitation among 
the sick and poor during the week. 

Peters was ordained deacon by Bishop Horatio 
Potter in Trinity Chapel, New York, on Sunday, July 
24, 1876. The first service in which he officiated after 


Linguistic Studies 365 


his ordination was, at the request of his old teacher 
and friend, Bishop Seymour, then Dean of the General 
Seminary and Chaplain of the House of Mercy, held 
at the last named institution, then located at the foot 
of 86th Street, in the afternoon of that same day. His 
first sermon was preached in St. Michael’s Church on 
Christmas Day, 1876. Peters was ordained priest in 
St. Michael’s Church at the Advent ordination in the 
following year, and officiated in that church during the 
rector’s holidays in the summers of 1877, 1878, and 
1879. In the autumn of 1879 he went abroad to 
study Semitic languages at the University of Berlin, 
where he remained for eighteen months, until the 
spring of 1881. During this time he also officiated 
occasionally at the English Chapel, and during part 
of the time was acting chaplain to the English colony 
at Berlin. 

In the spring of 1881 Rev. Mortimer T. Jefferis, 
afterwards assistant at St. Michael’s Church, asked 
Peters’s assistance at Dresden on account of illness, 
and when Mr. Jefferis was compelled shortly after- 
wards to resign the rectorship of St. John’s Church, 
in that city, Peters was called to be minister in charge. 
At that time the congregation worshipped in the Stock 
Exchange hall. Peters set himself to raise the money 
to secure a site and to provide a proper church building, 
making this in his own mind the limit of his incumbency 
at St. John’s. Eighteen months later, in the autumn 
of 1882, a site having been purchased and the outlook 
for the erection of a church being sufficiently satis- 
factory, he resigned the charge of St. John’s to resume 
his Semitic studies, and was succeeded by the Rev. 
Talliafero F. Caskey, through whose active work the 
present beautiful church of St. John was erected. 


366 Annals of St. Michael’s 


In order to secure money to continue his studies, 
at the suggestion of Dr. Andrew D. White, then Ameri- 
can Minister to Germany, Peters had undertaken, 
while still in Berlin, to translate Muller’s Politische 
Geschichte der neuesten Zeit, 1816-1875. This work, 
with an appendix by Peters himself, carrying the 
history down to the date of publication, was finally 
published by the Harpers in 1882, under the title 
A Political History of Recent Times. 

in the meantime Peters had been married by his 
father in the Embassy in Berlin, August 13, 1881, 
to Gabriella Brooke Forman, daughter of Thomas 
Marsh Forman of Savannah and Helen Brooke of 
Virginia, who had been studying music at the Hoch- 
schule in that city. 

After resigning the charge of St. John’s Church, 
Dresden, Peters spent the winter of 1882-83 in Leip- 
zig, studying Semitic languages, devoting himself es- 
pecially to Assyriology under Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch. 
After that a month or so was spent in London copying 
and studying Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions 
in the British Museum, and then he returned to New 
York to take charge of St. Michael’s Church during 
his father’s absence on a long trip of ten months around 
the world for his health. During his residence at St. 
Michael’s Peters began, through a series of articles in 
the Evening Post, a campaign to arouse interest in 
the study of Semitic languages in America and to 
induce our colleges and universities to provide proper 
facilities for the study of those languages. It being 
known that it was Peters’s intention to devote himself 
to the teaching and exposition of the Old Testament, 
his old friend and teacher, Bishop Seymour, published, 
at about the time of his return to New York, a letter 


Professor in Philadelphia 367 


in the Living Church, setting forth his peculiar fitness for 
that work, and urging his appointment to a professorship 
in some Church institution. For the moment nothing 
came of this, but in the following year, 1884, after his 
father’s return and while Peters was temporarily acting 
as his assistant, through the influence of Phillips Brooks 
and his brother, Arthur, a chair was created for him and 
he was appointed to the professorship of Old Testament 
languages and literature in the Philadelphia Divinity 
School. 

During his temporary engagement at St. Michael’s, 
part of Peters’s work had been to preach once a month 
in German. At that time there was a large German 
constituency both in the church itself and also at 
Bethlehem Chapel, at least one-half of the baptisms, 
marriages and burials recorded in the parish register 
being conducted in German. It was necessary to pro- 
vide religious services for these people. This was done 
partly by a German Sunday School and the ministra- 
tions of a German assistant at Bethlehem Chapel, and 
partly through the German services held in St. Michael’s 
Church, at which latter, at least once a month, it was 
Peters’s duty to preach. To continue this work, on 
his acceptance of the call to a professorship in the 
Philadelphia Divinity School, the Vestry of St. Michael’s 
Church voted to appoint him also a regular assistant 
at St. Michael’s, his duties being to preach once a 
month in the morning in English and once a month in 
the evening in German. 

Peters was also for some time head of the Church 
German Society, and, as such, instrumental in pre- 
paring liturgical literature for the German mission 
work. Twenty years later he was a member of the 
Commission appointed by General Convention to make 


368 Annals of St. Michael’s 


a new translation of the Prayer Book into German, on 
which Commission he was associated, among others, 
with Dr. B. W. Wells, now a member of St. Michael’s 
Vestry. 

In accepting a professorship at the Divinity School 
in Philadelphia, Peters at the outset expressed his 
disapproval of separate small divinity schools having 
no connection with colleges or universities, and it was 
in fact on the assurance of certain of the Trustees of 
the Philadelphia Divinity School that they would 
second his effort to bring the Divinity School into 
closer connection with the University of Pennsylvania 
that he accepted the position. The first step towards 
establishing such a connection was taken the next year, 
1885, when Peters was appointed professor of Hebrew 
in the University of Pennsylvania. No salary was 
attached to this position, but it was arranged that the 
students of the Seminary should have certain privileges 
in the University in return for the services rendered the 
University by Peters. Peters was also able by this 
arrangement to transfer from the Divinity School to 
the University the language instruction in Hebrew, 
retaining in the Divinity School only the exegetical 
and historical study of the Old Testament. In con- 
junction with his old fellow-student under Professor 
Whitney, Prof. W. R. Harper, later president of the 
University of Chicago, Peters was also able to establish 
a Hebrew summer school in connection with the Phila- 
delphia Divinity School, which aided him greatly in his 
efforts to arouse interest in Philadelphia in Semitic 
studies in general and to improve the Hebrew scholar- 
ship of the students of the Seminary. 

While studying in Germany, Peters had become con- 
vinced of the extreme importance, for Old Testament 


Excavations at Nippur 369 


study, of excavations in Assyria and Babylonia, and 
almost immediately on his return to the United States 
he joined with a group of members of the American 
Oriental Society in organizing a committee to promote 
Babylonian exploration. It was his good fortune, 
through the kindness of Bishop Potter, to secure the 
ear of the late Miss Katherine Lorillard Wolfe for this 
enterprise. In the winter of 1883-84 she gave him 
$5000 for Babylonian research, which was turned over 
to the American Institute of Archeology and used in 
sending out a tentative expedition, or expedition of 
reconnoissance, under Dr. William Hayes Ward of the 
Independent, the results of which were published later 
by Peters in his Nzppur. 

Stimulated by this success, after his removal to 
Philadelphia Peters endeavored to secure funds for the 
further prosecution of this work and for the conduct of 
actual excavations in Babylonia. Finally, in 1887, he 
elicited the interest of some rich Philadelphians and 
friends of the University, who contributed the money for 
an expedition on condition that Peters should himself 
become director. Leave of absence was granted him 
for this purpose, and he went out to Babylonia in 1888 
as director of the University of Pennsylvania Expedition 
to Babylonia, the first expedition for excavation in the 
Semitic Orient ever sent out from this country, and 
one of the first expeditions for archeological work of 
any description ever undertaken by Americans. The 
expedition was delayed a long time in Constantinople, 
awaiting permission from the Porte to excavate, and 
there Peters completed a literary work on which he 
had been engaged for some years, the translation and 
editing of the Hebrew Old Testament in a form which 
should make it intelligible without comment to the 


370 Annals of St. Michael’s 


ordinary reader. This work was published by Messrs. 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, with whom in fact the idea origi- 
nated, under the title Scriptures Hebrew and Christian 
(the first two volumes dealing with the Old Testament 
were by Peters, the last volume, dealing with the New 
Testament, by his colleague, Dean Bartlett of the 
Philadelphia Divinity School), and later, with an intro- 
duction by Dean Farrar, the same work was published in 
England under the title The Bible for Home and School. 

The place selected for excavation by the Babylonian 
expedition was Nippur, the site of the oldest religious 
cult of which scholars had any knowledge from the 
inscriptions, but situated, unfortunately, in a pecul- 
iarly difficult and dangerous territory, about five 
days’ journey south of Baghdad, in the desert region 
between the Tigris and Euphrates. Excavations were 
commenced there early in 1889 and ended, after a little 
more than two months, with a serious disaster, the 
burning by the Arabs of the camp of the explorers, 
who were robbed and narrowly escaped massacre. 
The other members of the expedition resigned and 
Peters was recalled to America. The supporters of 
the expedition in Philadelphia, with a faith as com- 
mendable as it was remarkable, sent Peters back to the 
field, better equipped than before, and the second 
year’s work, 1890, resulted in a great success. The 
oldest temple discovered up to that time was partly 
unearthed by this expedition, E-Kur, the temple of 
En-Lil, the Bel of Nippur, and a very large number of 
extremely ancient inscriptions were unearthed and 
brought back to Constantinople. These were the 
oldest Babylonian inscriptions theretofore discovered, 
and the results of that expedition carried our knowl- 
edge of history back 2000 years in one leap. 


Excavations at Nippur 371 


Peters was obliged to spend a considerable part of 1891 
in Constantinople working over the material found in 
the expedition, and urging the claims of the University 
of Pennsylvania to a share in the spoils. As a result 
of this work he finally secured from the Turkish govern- 
ment the gift of a large share of the objects found, 
which were handed over to the University of Pennsyl- 
vania. Primarily as a result of this expedition a 
magnificent museum was erected to contain these 
and other archeological objects found by expedi- 
tions which grew out of the interest in archeology 
aroused in Philadelphia circles by this first expedition 
to Babylonia. The work at Nippur thus begun has 
been continued by the University of Pennsylvania 
more or less down to the present time with very 
astonishing results. The University of Chicago has 
also sent out an expedition to Babylonia. Further 
than this, Germany, France, and England have been 
aroused to new interest in Babylonia and Persia, and 
large and important expeditions have been sent out 
by those countries. 

Until 1895 Peters continued to be the home director 
of the Babylonian work, the excavations in the field, 
from 1893 onward, being conducted by Dr. John Henry 
Haynes, Peters’s lieutenant in the second expedition. 
An account of the work of the Babylonian expedition 
was published by Peters in 1896, under the title 
Nippur: or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates 
(Putnam’s. 2 vols.). 

In 1891, at the wish of his father, who expressed a 
desire for his assistance at St. Michael’s in his declining 
years, and that he should take up his work after his 
death, Peters resigned his professorship at the Divinity 
School in Philadelphia and was made first assistant at 


372 Annals of St. Michael’s 


St. Michael’s, with right of succession to the rectorship. 
It was arranged that he should still continue to hold 
his professorship at the University of Pennsylvania, 
spending two days a week there, the money received 
from this work being turned into the treasury of St. 
Michael’s Church to enable the church to secure ad- 
ditional clerical assistance. 

On the death of his father, in 1893, Peters was elected 
rector of St. Michael’s Church, a position which he has 
held ever since. At the same time he resigned his 
professorship in the University of Pennsylvania. He 
has continued the work of St. Michael’s on the lines 
laid down by his father, whose institution and city 
mission work, however, he did not feel competent or 
able to assume, in view of the increasing work in St. 
Michael’s parish, due to the rapid growth of the neigh- 
borhood. He has also interested himself to a con- 
siderable extent in municipal affairs and those matters 
which are generally included under the term “civic 
righteousness.”’ He is president of various organiza- 
tions dealing with municipal reform and has been con- 
cerned in a large amount of neighborhood work. He 
has endeavored to some extent to keep up his scholarly 
and literary work, lecturing somewhere each year on 
archeological or biblical themes. He is the author 
of The Old Testament and the New Scholarship and 
Early Hebrew Story, and has published a _ great 
many articles and reviews, besides collaborating in 
various publications dealing generally with Old Testa- 
ment work and oriental archeology. 

In 1890, through the kindness of friends of the Phila- 
delphia Divinity School, he was enabled, after leaving 
the excavations at Nippur, to spend some months in 
travel and study in Palestine. In 1902 he requested from 


Travels in Palestine 373 


the church a leave of absence of ten months, never 
having up to that time taken a long vacation, as has be- 
come the custom in city parishes, in order to revisit Pales- 
tine and prosecute further studies there. Owing to 
serious illness in his family, he was able to take in 
fact a vacation of only seven months, but during that 
time he had the good fortune, in company with Dr. 
Hermann Thiersch of Munich, to discover at the ancient 
Marissa, on the borders of Judzea, some very remarkable 
painted tombs. An account of these was published 
by Peters and Thiersch in England in 1906 under the 
title Painted Tombs from the Necropolis of Marissa, 
as a memoir of the Palestine Exploration Fund, in 
large quarto form, with numerous illustrations, the 
Dominican monks in Jerusalem contributing the 
colored sketches. 

Dr. Peters received the honorary degree of Doctor 
of Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1895, 
and in the same year the honorary degree of Doctor 
of Divinity from Yale University. In 1904 he was 
appointed Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral of 
St. John the Divine, of which he is also one of the 
Trustees. 


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UOWOILID ‘OOUVISIC, UL SaVAA eIgL JO osnoyy YSolg, punosdosoy uy 


SLHDISH SIVOONINOO18 WOYS HLYON DNIMOO1 


PART Ill 


CHURCHES AND INSTITUTIONS FOUNDED 
WHOLLY, OR IN PART, THROUGH 
ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH 


375 


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CHAPTER XIV 
CHURCHES 


I. St. Mary’s, Manhattanville—At the commence- 
ment of the nineteenth century, until after the War of 
1812,there was no Manhattanville. On the Hudson shore 
at this point was a bay called Harlem Cove, and so far 
as the region had a name that was the name applied 
to the valley which cuts the western highlands of Man- 
hattan Island at 129th Street. Above this valley on 
the south, on a high bluff overlooking the river, stood 
the house of Michael Hogan, one of the original pew- 
holders of St. Michael’s Church, now Claremont Hotel, 
and on the other side of the valley, but much farther 
removed from it, at about 144th Street, stood the 
country home of Jacob Schieffelin, another of the 
original pewholders. Both of these men had been 
Royalists in the Revolutionary period. Michael Hogan 
was an Irishman, born in County Clare in 1766, and 
served as midshipman in the British Navy with the 
Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV, for 
whom he seems to have conceived a strong affection. 
It was as midshipman in the British Navy that he 
first made acquaintance with New York, and he seems 
to have become so familiar with its waters at that 
time that he was commissioned to bring a French prize 


which his ship had captured into this port without a 
377 


378 Annals of St. Michael’s 


pilot. Later he entered the service of the East India 
Company and made a fortune in India, where he also 
married. He came to New York in 1803 or 1804 in his 
own ship from the Cape of Good Hope, with twelve 
slaves, whom he afterwards set free, and a family of 
young children. He is said to have been the first 
Irishman of position and property who came to this 
country. He built two houses in Bloomingdale, one 
of which he sold, retaining the other for his own resi- 
dence, and naming it Claremont after the residence of 
his old fellow midshipman the Duke of Clarence, per- 
haps also with some recollection of his own birthplace in 
Ireland. Mr. Hogan became as zealous a citizen of 
his new country as he had before been of the old. He 
was a man of considerable prominence in the com- 
munity, and when the South American Republics set 
themselves free from Spain he was sent as the repre- 
sentative from this country to Chili to greet our new 
fellow free state. 

The history of Mr. Schieffelin has been related in a 
former chapter. To him and his Quaker brothers-in- 
law, Messrs. Lawrence and Buckley, belonged a large 
tract immediately to the north of Bloomingdale, in- 
cluding the valley above described. In this valley, 
some time before 1820, they laid out the village of 
Manhattanville, opening eight or ten streets, all of 
which, Manhattan and Lawrence streets excepted, 
have since been done away with. 

In those days, Mr. Thomas Finlay conducted a 
school in a house which is still standing, directly over- 
looking the old village of Manhattanville, upon the 
hill spur west of Broadway between Manhattan and 
127th streets. In this school-house public service was 
occasionally celebrated by the clergy of different 


St. Mary’s Church Organized 379 


denominations. The only churches accessible to the 
denizens of Manhattanville were St. Michael’s, Bloom- 
ingdale, and the Dutch Reformed Church in Harlem, 
and no public conveyances ran from Manhattanville 
to either of those places. There were in fact only 
fifteen houses in the whole of the Manhattanville 
valley at that time. During the latter part of Dr. 
Jarvis’s rectorship at St. Michael’s, he had apparently 
held services on one or two occasions in Mr. Finlay’s 
schoolroom, the same courtesy being extended to him 
as to the ministers of all other denominations, in- 
cluding Roman Catholics; Mrs. Finlay, always, after 
service, according to the custom of the day, offering 
to the officiating clergyman a glass of wine. In the 
autumn of his accession to the cure of St. Michael’s, 
November 26, 1820, Mr. Richmond commenced con- 
ducting similar services at Mr. Finlay’s school-house. 
November 28, 1823, Mr. Finlay died and was buried 
in St. Michael’s Churchyard, and twenty days later, 
Thanksgiving Day, December 18th, a meeting was held 
at the school-house, with the approval and at the in- 
vitation of Mrs. Finlay, to organize a church. Morning 
service was said by a lay reader appointed by the 
Bishop. Mr. Richmond arrived by appointment after 
service, and those present organized themselves into a 
church, under the title of “the Rector, Church Wardens 
and Vestrymen of St. Mary’s Church, Manhattanville, 
Ninth Ward of the City of New York.’”” The wardens 
chosen were Valentine Nutter, also a warden of St. 
Michael’s, and Jacob Schieffelin, one of the founders 
and a vestryman of that church. At the first meeting 
of the Vestry, held December 27, 1823, Rev. William 
Richmond, rector of St. Michael’s, was chosen rector 
of St. Mary’s, and it was provided that “all male per- 


380 Annals of St. Michael’s 


sons of full age who shall contribute the sum of fifty 
cents annually”’ to support the services of the church 
should be members of the congregation and entitled 
to vote. A committee was appointed to put in a claim 
to a share in the surplus proceeds of the sale of the 
“Common Lands of the Freeholders and Inhabitants 
of Harlem,” according to the act of Legislature of 
March 28, 1820, and it was also provided that the 
“Free School” of St. Mary’s Church should be estab- 
lished in the village of Manhattanville, and that a 
claim should be made on the trustees of the Harlem 
Commons’ Fund for $2500 for this school under the 
aforementioned act. The next year the qualifications 
for membership were changed to “white male persons 
of full age, who shall for one year last preceding the 
Election have worshipped according to the rites of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church and shall have con- 
tributed the sum of not less than fifty cents,” ete. It 
was also provided that ‘‘ the Free School of St. Mary’s 
Church shall be open equally to all denominations.”’ 
Mr. Schieffelin was especially interested in St. Mary’s 
Church, Manhattanville belonging in considerable part 
to him, and his own country house standing in that 
neighborhood. His son, Gen. Richard L. Schieffelin, 
was associated with his father on the first vestry 
and was for many years treasurer of the parish, 
representing it also in Convention. The family in- 
terest has continued to this day, and since 1870 the 
Schieffelin family has been represented on St. Mary’s 
vestry by Mr. George R. Schieffelin, son of Richard L. 
Schieffelin. It is not surprising to find John C. 
Hamilton, the son of Mr. Schieffelin’s dear friend and 
neighbor, General Hamilton, elected to the Vestry in 
1824, and his brother, James A. Hamilton, in 1826, 


Subscribers to Building Fund 381 


in which year also, Jacob Lorillard was elected vestry- 
man. In 1824 it was decided to ask for an endowment 
from Trinity. This was never granted, but at a slightly 
later date an annual grant of $300 was made, reduced 
in 1849 to $200. 

Mr. Richmond was assisted in his work at Manhat- 
tanville by Mr. Thomas T. Groshon, a lay reader, and 
services were held twice each Sunday in Mr. Finlay’s 
school-house until sometime in the year 1825, when 
Mr. Richmond resigned the rectorship of the church 
on account of his other duties. Before that time, 
in 1824, Mr. Schieffelin had offered a piece of land 
60 x 100 feet to the church, and the construction of a 
church building had begun. Among the subscribers 
to the building fund appear a number of names familiar 
in the history of the Church in New York in general 
and of St. Michael’s Church in particular, with others 
who were not Churchmen at all, like Jacob Harsen. 
About $1200 was collected by subscription, through 
the efforts, principally, of Mr. Groshon; $800 was 
received from the Harlem Commons’ Fund, and $1200 
was borrowed on three mortgages, an assignment of 
which was taken by the Corporation of Trinity Church. 
In order to execute these mortgages, Rev. John Sellon 
was elected rector in 1825. He seems to have per- 
formed no other function than to contribute twenty 
dollars to the building fund, his name heading the sub- 
scription list, and sign the mortgages, after which he 
passes out of the records. In December, 1825, the 
Church moved out of Mr. Finlay’s school into the 
school of James Macomb, which was given free of 
rent. The church was finally consecrated October 
23, 1826. In the meantime Mr. Schieffelin’s Quaker 
brothers-in-law had erected a Meeting House on land 


382 Annals of St. Michael’s 


adjoining that given by Mr. Schieffelin for St. Mary’s 
Church. This Meeting House, long since vanished, 
lay between the church and Phineas Street, which ran 
a little west of what is now Amsterdam Avenue. It 
stood, therefore, on what is now The Sheltering Arms 
playground. A generation later members of the Law- 
rence family were among the most liberal contributors 
toward the erection of a rectory for St. Mary’s Church. 

The first bell hung in the church belonged to Jacob 
Schieffelin. It is supposed to have come from one 
of the West India islands, and had formerly been 
used on the Manhattanville Academy, which Mr. 
Schieffelin had built when Manhattanville was laid 
out, on what is now Manhattan Street and Amsterdam 
Avenue. The pulpit and desk, with hangings and 
drapery, were presented by St. George’s Church. 
They were of the old three-decker type. The pulpit, 
six sided, stood like a watch tower against the chancel 
wall. It was approached by a high flight of winding 
stairs and guarded bya door. Above it was a sounding 
board, whose only visible sustaining agent was a small 
dove upon the top, which bore in its beak a branch 
from some tree or bush. In front of the pulpit, much 
lower down, was a long desk with a settee for three 
occupants. The Bible occupied the middle and higher 
portion of the desk, prayer books resting on a lower 
portion on either side. In front of this desk was a 
small pine table used for the administration of the 
Holy Communion. The arrangements of the church 
in this regard were not unlike those still common 
in many Congregational churches throughout New 
England. 

As soon as the church was built a committee was 
appointed to let pews, and it was provided that the 


ihe Schieffelin Pew and Vault 383 


members of the congregation entitled to a vote in the 
annual elections should be those who rented pews. It 
appears also that when Jacob Schieffelin and Hannah 
Lawrence, his wife, gave the land for the church, sixty 
feet on Lawrence Street and one hundred feet deep, 
they reserved the right to select a pew for themselves 
and their heirs and to build a vault. In the vestry 
minutes of June 19, 1828, it is recorded that they 
selected the double pew No. 19, at the east corner of 
the church, to the left of the pulpit, and a square 
of fifteen feet in front of the westerly front window 
for a vault, and here in fact the Schieffelin vault was 
built. In further recognition of its indebtedness to 
the Schieffelin family for its existence, the seal adopted 
by the church was the Schieffelin crest. 

The Vestry had voted that Thomas T. Groshon 
should become rector as soon as he became deacon. 
He died, however, before his ordination, October 3, 
1828, and Rev. William Richmond was again chosen 
rector. In his report to Convention he states that 
the pecuniary embarrassments of the church “induced 
him to take charge of it in addition to his other duties.”’ 
There were at that time “very few families in the 
village in the habit of attending service.’”’ By the 
following year, however, the church is “ generally filled 
every Sunday, and a considerable congregation has 
been present at the service, and during the instruction 
of the Bible class on Wednesdays.” With a fund of 
$600, which he raised by $50 subscriptions from rectors 
of city churches, he engaged the Rev. George L. Hinton 
as his assistant to conduct services once each Sunday 
at St. Mary’s, “and once in the village of Harlaem.”’ 
He also raised a further sum of $1000 “to defray 
the current expenses of the Church and Sunday School, 


334 Annals of St. Michael’s 


pay the interest on the mortgage, and procure the neces- 
sary repairs and improvements.” Mr. Richmond also 
brought a new accession of strength from St. Michael’s 
to the Vestry in the persons of Doctors Williams, Mac- 
Donald, and Bailey, Messrs. Kane, Russell, Ford, De- 
Peyster, Holly, and Whitlock, all members of the Vestry 
of that church. Nevertheless the condition of St. 
Mary’s continued to be a very embarrassed one. On 
April 13, 1830, Mr. Hinton informs the Vestry that 
he must resign his position as assistant unless paid 
$150 per annum, and owing to the “embarrassed con- 
dition of the finances”’ his resignation is accepted, the 
church at the same time relinquishing its claim on the 
missionary subscription raised by Mr. Richmond for 
work in Manhattanville and Harlem. In 1834 a judg- 
ment was obtained against the church. In 1835 it 
appears that Mr. Richmond’s annual salary of $300 
has never been paid, and there is now due him the sum 
of $1850. 

One event of great importance occurred in those 
years. In 1831 St. Mary’s was made a free church, 
the first free church in New York, and apparently in 
the country. It should be added that the only 
recorded receipts from pew-rents for the preceding 
years, when St. Mary’s was a pewed church, are $53 in 
the year 1827. To this period belongs also the first 
visitation of cholerain New York, in 1832. The terror 
of the unknown scourge was like that which prevailed 
in London in the great plague. Those in health de- 
serted the sick, fleeing from the houses where the 
cholera had appeared. Among others Mr. Hinton, 
who had been assistant at St. Mary’s such a short time 
before, died of that disease. The city put the whole 
upper part of Manhattan under Mr. Richmond’s care, 


The Cholera 385 


with authority to order at his discretion and at the pub- 
lic charge whatever might be needed, either by way of 
food or other care, for the famine stricken and suffering 
poor. He went everywhere, entering where others 
feared to go; and with him 


went one who deserves to be mentioned in connection 
with the history of Manhattanville, because she alone 
followed him everywhere, and went, without hesitation, to 
murse wherever asked. Her standing, Churchwise, was 
not good; her position socially inferior; her education and 
mental culture entirely neglected; yet, what Christians 
would not do, Mrs. Reid did. She practised, in time of sore 
trial, what they were slow to do—the religion which visits 
those in affliction. 


In 1836 Rev. James C. Richmond was appointed 
assistant minister with the right of succession to the 
rectorship, and in 1837, on the resignation of his 
brother, he became rector. There are no vestry 
records from 1840 to 1849, and between 1840 and 1844 
there are not even notices of annual elections. From 
other sources it appears that Rev. James Richmond 
resigned his rectorship of St. Mary’s about 1843; but 
the actual work of the parish had been done by Mr. 
Thomas M. Peters, acting as lay reader, since October 
or November of 1841. During that period a Sunday 
evening service was held in the church each Sunday, 
with a Sunday School in the afternoon. The entire 
receipts of the church at that period, outside of the 
Trinity grant, were only about $16 a year, the amount 
of the Sunday night collections. From the reports 
to Convention it appears, however, that the Sun- 
day School of St. Mary’s was through all this period 
larger than the Sunday Schools at St. Michael’s and 


386 Annals of St. Michael’s 


St. James’s, owing to the fact that St. Mary’s minis- 
tered to a very poor congregation and St. Michael’s 
and St. James’s to rich congregations of summer resi- 
dents. Moreover, St. Mary’s Church was located in a 
village, St. Michael’s and St. James’s in country districts. 
In July, 1847, Mr. Peters, having taken deacon’s orders, 
was appointed assistant to Mr. Richmond, and put in 
charge of St. Mary’s Church. During Mr. Richmond’s 
absence on his Oregon mission, from 1851 to 1853, Mr. 
Peters, being in charge also of St. Michael’s, All Angels’, 
and the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, engaged Rev. 
George L. Neide to assist him at Manhattanville. It 
being plain that the church could not be made suc- 
cessful and self-supporting without a resident minister 
Mr. Peters undertook at this time to build a rectory 
by subscription; which was completed and paid for at a 
cost of $1167.32, Mr. Peters and Mr. Neide being them- 
selves the largest contributors. The subscription list, 
which has been preserved, contains not a single name 
which appeared on the subscription for the construc- 
tion of the church less than thirty years before. In 
the intervening period the Tiemanns had come into the 
valley and established their paint factory, and other 
industrial enterprises had followed suit. These are all 
represented among the subscribers. From Carmans- 
ville appear the Fields, Hicksons, and Bradhursts, 
and from Bloomingdale the Meiers, Punnetts, Schwabs, 
von Posts, and Malis. With Mr. Peters also appears 
in the Vestry a new group of men who were associated 
with him then or to be associated with him later in his 
City Mission and institutional work, and some of them 
also as vestrymen at St. Michael’s, James Punnett, 
John Jay, Jas. S. Breath, Daniel F. Tiemann, Peter C. 
Tiemann, and Dr, D. T. Brown. 


Mr. Peters Elected Rector 387 


On his return from Oregon in February, 1853, Mr. 
Richmond resigned the cure of. St. Mary’s, and Mr. 
Peters was elected rector. During the entire period 
of his rectorship Mr. Richmond had received no salary 
from the church. Not only had his nominal stipend 
of $300 a year not been paid, but he had also expended 
money for the church for which he had not been reim- 
bursed. In 1849 the sum due to him amounted to 
$6566.17, which he donated to the church; but again 
in the following year it is noted in the vestry records 
that he had expended $400 on “ Assistant Ministers and 
Horse Hire,” which debt he alsocancelled. Mr. Peters 
undertook to make the church really self-supporting. 
Owing to his other duties at St. Michael’s and All Angels’ 
it was at first arranged that Mr. Neide should continue 
to reside in the rectory, working in the parish, and at 
the same time conducting services on Blackwell’s 
Island under the Mission to Public Institutions. In 
1854 he was succeeded in the position of assistant, 
residing in the parsonage, by Rev. Robert T. Pearson, 
formerly in charge of a Methodist congregation in 
Manhattanville, who had recently taken orders in the 
Church. In 1855, the parsonage having been enlarged, 
Mr. Peters himself contributing no small portion of the 
expense of that enlargement, the latter moved into the 
rectory, and Rev. Charles E. Phelps, his old seminary 
classmate, who was also in charge of All Angels’ Church 
and a missionary of the Mission to Public Institutions, 
was appointed his assistant, so continuing by annual 
appointment of the Vestry until the close of Mr. Peters’s 
rectorship. During the greater part of Mr. Peters’s 
tectorship Rev. Thomas Cook was also engaged as 
a special assistant to hold services in German for 
the large German population of Manhattanville and 


388 Annals of St. Michael’s 


vicinity, Mr. Peters not feeling himself competent to. 
preach in that language, although quite capable to 
administer the offices of the Church, Baptism, Matri- 
mony, etc. In this work among the Germans Mr. 
Peters was materially assisted by the group of Caspar 
Meier’s family and descendants in Bloomingdale. 

With the settlement in the parsonage of its own 
rector, the independent existence of St. Mary’s Church 
may be said to have begun, and between that time 
and the date of his resignation Mr. Peters succeeded 
in putting the church on a self-supporting basis. The 
basement of the church was equipped for a Sunday 
School. The church lot was increased, largely, as he 
writes, through the liberality and vigorous exertions 
of Mr. James Punnett, from 60 x 100 to 140 x 148 feet. 
A much larger section of land was bought by Mr. 
Peters and Mr. Punnett, and transferred by them in 
1858 to St. Michael’s Free Church Society for the bene- 
fit of St. Mary’s Church, when the latter should be 
able to pay off the mortgage put uponit. This, unfortu- 
nately, it was never able to do, and a dozen years later 
the land was acquired by The Sheltering Arms, as 
related elsewhere. Mr. Peters’s rectorship of St. 
Mary’s was a time of simple living and hard work. 
It was his custom to open the church, kindle the fire, 
and ring the bell himself. Only thus could he be sure 
that all would be in readiness for service. March 1st, 
1859, he resigned the rectorship of St. Mary’s Church 
to become rector of St. Michael’s, and with that date 
the actual connection between the Mother Church and 
this its oldest daughter ceased, the latter being at that 
time about thirty-six years of age.! 


1For the material in this chapter, besides the records of St. 
Mary’s Church, which were kindly placed at my disposal, I am 


Services at Fort Washington 389 


II. St. Ann’s Church, Fort Washington.—There 
was, in the earlier part of the last century, a small 
handful of poor people located at what was called Fort 
Washington Pass. On the evening of the second Sun- 
day after the Epiphany, as he notes with his usual 
Churchly precision, January 17, 1819, the Rev. Dr. 
Jarvis, rector of St. Michael’s Church, gave a lecture 
in the school-house at Fort Washington and baptized 
there a dozen young people belonging to three different 
families, Collins, Sherman, and Francis, and varying 
in age from nineteen years down to infants in arms. 
After this it was apparently his custom to hold occa- 
sional services in that neighborhood until the close of 
his rectorship. Mr. Richmond took up the work thus 
begun and undertook to organize it into a church. 
His first service at Fort Washington, like his first ser- 
vice at Manhattanville, was held November 26, 1820, 
the one apparently in the afternoon, the other in the 
evening, at the house of a Mr. Morse. At that period, 
it will be remembered, no services were held in St. 
James’s Church at this time of the year, and, therefore, 
the morning service at St. Michael’s ended, the rector 
was free to utilize the remainder of the day for mis- 
sionary work at his own discretion. 

The work at Fort Washington was somewhat slower 
in development than the work at Manhattanville, and 
it is not until 1827 that mention is made in the Con- 
vention Journal of the actual organization of a church. 
By that date St. Ann’s Church, Fort Washington, had 
been incorporated, and “the congregation now worships 
in the Hamilton School.’’ This church continued 


chiefly indebted to an Historical Address delivered at the Semi- 
Centennial Celebration of St. Mary’s Church, Manhattanville, 
by the Rev. T. M. Peters, S. T. D., December 18, 1873. 


390 Annals of St. Michael’s 


to be reported to and represented in Convention for 
about ten years. While actually an appendage of St. 
Michael’s, yet during a portion of this period, from 
1829-30, Rev. Augustus Fitch, a teacher, recorded 
somewhat vaguely as connected with a school in Bloom- 
ingdale and having a school in Harlem, was minister, 
and, after his ordination as priest, rector of the parish. 
Sunday services, at least during the summer, do not 
seem as a rule to have been conducted by Mr. Rich- 
mond himself, but he reports in 1829 that he is officiat- 
ing on Wednesday evenings at St. Ann’s. In 1832 
he reports that the services in St. Ann’s Church are 
conducted by the Rev. J. M. Forbes, who “divides 
his time between Manhattanville and Fort Washington, 
holding the services on Sunday evenings at the Bloom- 
ingdale Insane Asylum.” St. Ann’s was represented 
in Convention during part or all of this time by Mr. 
Frederick DePeyster, of the Vestry of St. Michael’s. 

The records of the church do not exist, and we have 
no knowledge of the names of the wardens and vestry- 
men, but it would seem that here, as at Manhattan- 
ville, they were, to a considerable extent at least, the 
same persons who were also officers in St. Michael’s 
parish. No church building was ever erected, and fi- 
nally, in 1836 or 1837, the centre of population in that 
neighborhood having shifted farther to the southward, 
and Rev. William Richmond having left Blooming- 
dale to undertake a Free Church enterprise downtown, 
St. Ann’s Church was abandoned. At a later date, 
in 1847, the Church of the Intercession, now become 
a Chapel of Trinity, was founded, largely through the 
instrumentality of the parish of St. Andrew’s in Harlem, 
itself a child of St. Michael’s, to provide for the spiritual 
needs of the new village of Carmansville, which had 


St. Matthew’s Church, Yorkville 39! 


sprung up a mile or so farther to the southward, but 
in the same general district for which St. Ann’s had 
been originally designed. 

III. St. Matthew's Church, Y orkville—In his reports 
as rector of St. James’s Church, Hamilton Square, 
Dr. Jarvis mentions a missionary school which has 
been undertaken for “the blacks.’”’ There was at an 
early date, apparently, a considerable colored popula- 
tion in St. James’s parish, centring somewhere in the 
neighborhood of 64th Street. At a later date a consider- 
able white population grew up eastward of Hamilton 
Square, having its centre farther to the north. These 
were people of an entirely different class from the 
wealthy summer residents who were pewholders at St. 
James’s. As rector of that church, Mr. Richmond felt 
under obligation to care for these people. As they 
would not come to the parish church of St. James he 
undertook to hold services for them. These services 
were begun at about 84th Street, in the village of York- 
ville, April 6, 1828, and as a result there was organized 
what was known as St. Matthew’s Church, which was 
never, however, incorporated, and of which no formal 
reports appear in the Convention Journal. The only 
mention of this work in Mr. Richmond’s reports to 
Convention is an occasional reference to the service 
which he is rendering to “another church in Yorkville.”’ 
After the separation of St. Michael’s and St. James’s, 
in 1842, Mr. Richmond handed over this mission, 
together with the educational work which he had un- 
dertaken in Yorkville, to the rector of St. James’s 
Church. The work seems to have been continued as 
a mission for some years. Finally in 1853, Rev. Dr. 
Chauncey, having become rector of St. James’s Church, 
founded in that neighborhood, as successor to and a 


392 Annals of St. Michael’s 


development from the mission formerly known as 
St. Matthew’s, the Church of the Redeemer, which was 
at a much later date removed to 136th Street. 

IV. St. Andrew’s Church, Harlem—Toward the 
end of 1828 Mr. Richmond extended his activities 
to Harlem. This was a village of considerable im- 
portance, founded at an early date, and having a well- 
established Dutch Reformed Church. There were, 
however, not a few Episcopalians residing there, some 
for the summer and some all the year round. These 
found it difficult and inconvenient to attend services 
at St. James’s or St. Michael’s. Dr. Wainwright, then 
rector of Grace Church, and subsequently provisional 
Bishop of the Diocese, seems to have been in the habit 
of spending his summer vacations in Harlem, and it is 
said to have been at his suggestion that a meeting of a 
few of the inhabitants of that vicinity was held at the 
house of Mr. Pennoyer, the apothecary of the village, 
at the southwestern corner of Third Avenue and 122d 
Street. Mr. T. C. Groshon, candidate for Holy Orders, 
working in St. Mary’s Church under Rev. Mr. Rich- 
mond, presided on this occasion. A resolution was 
introduced and passed, to the effect that it is ex- 
pedient to erect a Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
village of Harlem, and a committee was appointed to 
solicit donations. 

In 1828 Mr. Richmond took the matter up and en- 
gaged the Rev. G. L. Hinton as assistant minister to 
conduct services once each Sunday at St. Mary’s 
Church, Manhattanville, and once in Harlem. Ar- 
rangements were made for holding services in the 
Village Academy, on 120th Street, near Third Avenue, 
by the courteous permission of its trustees, who were 
for the most part members of the Dutch Reformed 


All Angels’ Church 393 


Church. Mr. Richmond held the first service at this 
place December 7, 1828, after which Mr. Hinton took 
up the work. He met with such success that on the 
14th day of February, 1829, a meeting of the congre- 
gation was held at the Academy, wardens and vestry- 
men were chosen, and the parish was duly organized 
under the corporate title of ‘The Rector, Wardens and 
Vestrymen of St. Andrew’s Church, in the Village of 
Harlem, in the Twelfth Ward of the City and County 
of New York.’”’ At the first meeting of the Vestry 
the Rev. George L. Hinton was elected rector. Mr. 
Richmond raised the sum of $600 from various city 
rectors, in subscriptions of $50 each, for the space of 
two years, to pay the salary of Mr. Hinton, who con- 
tinued until 1830 to be assistant at St. Mary’s Church 
as well as rector of St. Andrew’s. 

Technically, the parent of St. Andrew’s may be said 
to be St. Mary’s Church, as Mr. Hinton is recorded 
as assistant at that Church. St. Mary’s was, however, 
at that time and until much later, a mere dependency of 
St. Michael’s and it was in reality, therefore, the rector 
of St. Michael’s to whom the foundation of St. Andrew’s 
‘Church is due. 

V. All Angels’ Church—Some account has been 
given in an earlier chapter of the conditions and the 
population of the territory now included in Central 
Park. In the village then called Seneca, on the site 
of the present reservoir, the Rev. James Richmond 
commenced a mission Sunday School in 1833, after 
his return from Europe and before his consecration, 
under the direction of his brother, the Rev. William 
Richmond, rector of St. Michael’s Church. Thirteen 
years later, 1846, work in this region was resumed, and 
a Sunday School was started in the house of a Miss 


394 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Evers, in 85th Street near 8th Avenue, by Mr. Minot 
M. Wells, then a student in the General Theological 
Seminary, afterwards rector of the Church of the 
Holy Innocents, Highland Falls, and Miss A. E. Hal- 
stead. In the following year the Rev. T. M. Peters, 
then assistant at St. Michael’s, took charge of the Sun- 
day School, and commenced further to hold regular 
religious services in the same place. In 1848 four 
ladies, theretofore unknown in connection with the 
work, Mrs. Emma Dashwood, Mrs. Louisa L. Wright, 
Mrs. Frances A. Carroll, and Miss Arabella Ludlow, 
gave four lots in 85th Street near 8th Avenue as a site 
for a church and burial ground. 

Mr. Peters undertook to raise the money to build 
a church on this site and collected, chiefly in small 
sums, $1308.87, the congregation of St. Michael’s 
donating a part of it, by a general solicitation, ap- 
parently, of all Churchmen whom he could reach. 
The building actually cost about $1000 more than 
the amount collected, leaving the church that much 
in debt to Mr. Peters. The church was consecrated 
in 1849, under the name of All Angels’, Dr. A. V.. 
Williams, Rev. C. R. Duffie, John A. King, and John 
Jay, Jr., being appointed trustees. That part of 
the land not built upon was used as a graveyard, 
and many poor people, especially colored people 
of that neighborhood, were buried there during the 
cholera visitation of 1849. Shortly after this, in 
1851, the city forbade all interments below 86th 
Street, and, as All Angels’ was just below that limit, 
the cemetery was closed in that year. In that year 
also, Mr. Peters purchased for the purpose of a 
cemetery seven acres of land in Astoria. In 1852, 
Mr. Peters deeded both the cemetery in Astoria and 


Deeded to St. Michael’s 395 


also All Angels’ Church, the title to which seems to 
have vested in him, in trust to St. Michael’s Church, 
on condition of the payment by the latter of the debt 
of $1000 due to him. 

In his report to Convention in 1853 Mr. Peters says 
of the work at All Angels’: “It is true missionary ground 
among a large, scattered, poor population. Many of 
those ministered to are blacks.”” There were 77 persons 
baptized in that year, of whom 6 were adults, 4 con- 
firmed, 4 couples married, 22 persons buried; and 
there were 50 communicants, and 7o catechumens. 
It was a vigorous mission, but so poor that the total 
contributions for the year, were only $13.58; $1.03 for 
the poor, $3.51 for parish purposes, and $9.04 for 
the Suburban Clerical Association, that is, really, 
for the Mission to Public Institutions. The report of 
the work of the latter in the Colored Home, Bellevue 
Hospital, Alms House, Blackwell’s Island, New York 
Orphan Asylum, Randall’s Island, Penitentiary, etc., 
is included in the report of All Angels’ Church for 
that year, the future City Mission Society being 
then only a parochial undertaking of St. Michael’s 
Church and its dependencies. 

In 1856 the city of New York condemned the land 
between sth and 8th avenues from 59th to ro4th 
streets, including, of course, the four lots on which All 
Angels’ stood, for a park, awarding the sum of $4010 as 
damages therefore. In the spring of the preceding 
year, 1855, Mr. Peters had engaged Rev. Charles E. 
Phelps as assistant at St. Mary’s and All Angels’, as- 
signing to him the especial charge of the latter, to- 
gether with work in the Mission to Public Institutions. 
Mr. Phelps writes of his duties and of the early days 
of All Angels’ Church as follows: 


396 Annals of St. Michael’s 


A part of my duty was to hold service at the Peni- 
tentiary on Blackwell’s Island every Sunday morning. On 
the second Sunday in the month, however, the Rev. William 
Richmond, then the rector of St. Michael’s, had been in the 
habit of holding service at the Penitentiary, including the 
Holy Communion. On those Sundays I took his place at 
St. Michael’s, either by reading the service or preaching. 
I held service every Sunday, at 1 P.m., at All Angels’ 
Mission, which at that time was located in 85th Street, a 
little east of 8th Avenue. The congregation was composed 
partly of colored people, and partly of Germans, all of whose 
houses were located in what was afterward the Central 
Park. This continued for about a year, when the church 
and houses all had to be vacated, on account of the 
opening of the Park. It was then a problem what was to 
be done, for the congregation had all been dispersed. Dr. 
Peters suggested that I should begin holding services in a 
private house [of a Mrs. Brown] on the Bloomingdale 
Road. The congregation soon became so good that it was 
found necessary to hire a public hall on 74th Street and 
Broadway. All the expense of this was borne by Dr. 
Peters himself, with members of St. Michael’s Church, and 
Trinity Church, which helped us. 


As a result of the condemnation of the Park, the 
entire old congregation was scattered and a new 
congregation organized, only one person in which 
belonged to the original congregation of All Angels’. 
The old church building was bought from the city 
at a cost of $250 and removed piecemeal to the pre- 
sent site, 81st Street and 11th Avenue, now West 
End Avenue, where four lots had been purchased 
at an expense of $2825.86. In the meantime, on Janu- 
ary 23, 1858, St. Michael’s Free Church Society had 
been organized for the purpose of “the establishment 
of Free Churches in the City of New York in communion 


Incorporation of All Angels 397 


with and subject to the discipline of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church of the United States of America.’’ 
The incorporators of this Society were the Rev. T. M. 
Peters, and Messrs. James Punnett, William Henry 
Low, Thomas A. Richmond, A. V. Williams, D. T. 
Brown, and P.C. Tiemann. To this Society, after the 
$1000 which had been advanced in 1852 had been 
repaid, St. Michael’s Church made over the property 
held by it for All Angels’ Church. 

Services were begun in the new All Angels’ Church 
on the last Sunday in June, 1858, and by Christmas 
of the same year the attendance had become so good 
that it was thought best to incorporate the parish. 
This was done on December 29, 1858, and at the 
same time the Rev. Charles E. Phelps was elected 
tector, Mr. Peters having resigned the cure when 
he took charge of St. Michael’s Church. Mr. Phelps’s 
salary was helped out after he became rector, as it had 
been before, by the work which he did as a missionary 
to the Public Institutions. He writes that during the 
three years before he was made rector of All Angels’ 
he had held services for the Mission to Public Institu- 
tions at Randall’s Island, Blackwell’s Island, Bellevue 
Hospital, and the Colored Home, then located in 
Yorkville, at 64th Street. During the ten following 
years, while he was rector of All Angels’ Church, he 
served at Bellevue Hospital, the Colored Home, and the 
New York Orphan Asylum, with occasional services 
at Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum and the House of 
Mercy. Mr. Phelps resigned the charge of All Angels’ 
on account of ill health in 1868 and was succeeded by 
the Rev. John M. Heffernan. In the following year, 
1869, St. Michael’s Free Church Society conveyed 
to the vestry of All Angels’ Church the property held 


398 Annals of St. Michael’s 


by it for that church, including the land and building, 
the deed providing that the title to this property 
should revert to St. Michael’s Church in case a free 
church was not “thereafter always maintained upon 
the property of all Angels’.”” Mr. Heffernan was suc- 
ceeded in June of 1870 by the Rev. Dr. D. F. Warren. 
In December of the following year, the latter proposed 
to Rev. Dr. Peters, both as rector of St. Michael’s 
Church and President of St. Michael’s Free Church 
Society, the sale of All Angels’ Church to Trinity 
Church, the latter undertaking to erect a chapel on 
that site. As the result of several communications 
on this subject, Dr. Peters writes, under date of Decem- 
ber 19, 1871: 

I do not see how we could take the action proposed by 
you without contradicting ourselves. St. Michael’s for- 
merly held All Angels’ property. We thought that as an 
independent Church All Angels’ would eventually prosper 
more than if attached as a chapel to another church. If it 
is to return to a dependent position it had better come 
back to its starting point. I do not think it would be 
pleasant to any of us to look back at all the labor of estab- 
lishing All Angels’, if it were to result in our procuring 
ground for another church to build a chapel on. 

I do not think it is the best thing for All Angels’.” 


That was the end of the proposition to turn All 
Angels’ into a Chapel of Trinity. Dr. Warren resigned 
November 1, 1872. In 1873 All Angels’ Church asks 
St. Michael’s to release its reversionary interest in All 
Angels’ property, that the latter may borrow money 
thereon, and, in the interest of the future of All 
Angels’, St. Michael’s refuses. On Christmas day, 
1873, Rev. Dr. Charles F. Hoffman became rector of 
All Angels’, and from that date on St. Michael’s Church 


A Settlement Asked for 399 


has no further direct concern with its affairs until 1888, 
when the neighborhood had changed from a semi-rural 
suburb to an integral part of a great and crowded 
city. On March i1gth of that year the following com- 
munication was addressed to the Rector, Wardens, and 
Vestrymen of St. Michael’s Church by the Rector, 
Wardens, and Vestrymen of All Angels’ Church: 


At a meeting of the Vestrymen of this parish it was 
resolved that the following communication be forwarded 
to your honorable body: 

Whereas, this parish has received an offer from the Rev. 
Chas. F. Hoffman, D.D., to build and complete for it a new 
Church, at an approximate cost of $100,ooo—on condition 
that the present property be first freed from all assess- 
ments and other incumbrances, and that the current ex- 
penses of the parish be pledged by responsible parties for 
the next two years; and that the necessary excavation 
be first made; and Whereas, these conditions—necessitating 
the raising of over $20,ooo—can with great difficulty be 
met, because of an alleged remainder in this property said 
to be held by your parish, giving us in reality, as has been 
claimed, only a free lease of this property on conditions 
imposed by members of your parish; and Whereas, this 
Church we now occupy has been maintained as a free 
Church for more than thirty years, and for fifteen years at 
great expense to the rector of this parish; and Whereas, we 
have paid in full a Mortgage of $2500, with interest for 
many years on this property, and furthermore to retain said 
property we must still pay assessments amounting to nearly 
$5000; and Whereas, the greatly increased value of this 
property may be a source of temptation to some future 
members of the corporation in which the alleged remainder 
in this property is claimed to be vested, and may thus be a 
constant source of discord between the parish of “St. 
Michael’s” and the parish of ‘‘ All Angels’”’; and Whereas, 
the great change in the character of this vicinity promises 


400 Annals of St. Michael’s 


to do away with the necessity of a free church to meet the 
wants of poor people, and in fact may sometime necessitate 
the raising of its income by means other than the offertory, 
although we have no present idea of restricting the freedom 
of the seats; and Whereas, there will always be more free 
seats in the new Church (in any contingency) than there 
are now seats of all kinds in the present structure; and 
Whereas, in the opinion of the Diocesan and all other 
persons interested in the future of this work as a part of 
the Church in this great City, the efficiency, permanence and 
prosperity of the work will be greatly enhanced, and the 
unity of our two parishes greatly advanced by the transfer 
to us on your part of any interest you may now have or 
claim to have, by reason of the said alleged remainder in 
this property—We therefore respectfully submit these pre- 
ambles for your consideration, with the request that you 
will, as soon as possible in view of the interests at stake, 
take the matter up and appoint a committee from your 
body to confer with a like committee from this body, that 
a fair and reasonable basis of settlement may be agreed 
upon for submission to the respective corporations, at an 
early date. 


The idea of a free church entertained by the persons 
who composed this document, namely, that a free 
church is meant only for poor people and that if people 
are well-to-do they will of necessity have a pewed 
church, was of course abhorrent to the conception of 
a free church entertained by the Rector, Wardens, 
and Vestrymen of St. Michael’s Church, and repre- 
sented in fact an idea against which Dr. Peters had 
often earnestly and publicly protested as actually 
anti-Christian. The object of a free church was to do 
away with the distinction of rich and poor in God’s 
house, to bring rich and poor together in the same 
building to the advantage of both. It was to create 


— = 


ST. JAMES’S CHURCH 
Hamilton Square 


ST. TIMOTHY’S PARISH HALF A CENTURY SINCE 
Looking South from Columbus Circle 


Guaranteed to be a Free Church 40! 


a church where rich and poor should meet together 
as real brothers, children of one father, that Dr. 
Peters had begged the money with which the land of 
All Angels’ Church was bought, and he was unwilling 
that the land bought with money donated for that 
' special purpose should be diverted to another use. 

This communication from All Angels’ Church was fol- 
lowed rapidly by another from the Bishop of the Diocese, 
dated April 7, 1888: 


Since I saw you, I have been officially informed by the 
authorities of All Angels’ Church that they are prepared to 
covenant that the Church which it is proposed to erect on 
the West End Avenue lots shall be a Free Church. They 
desire, however, that “‘the remainder” at present held by 
the Rector and Vestry of St. Michael’s Church, shall, to 
avoid future friction, be vested in the Diocesan authori- 
ties, the trustees of the Estate and property of the Diocesan 
Convention, or some other Corporation;—and this seems 
to me a reasonable, equitable and orderly request. 

As there seems to be no further obstacle to the consum- 
mation of the precise purpose for which the lots at present 
occupied by All Angels’ Church were originally secured, I 
am sure that you and your Vestry will gladly co-operate to 
hasten that end. 

Both of these communications were presented to the 
Vestry of St. Michael’s Church at the annual meeting, 
April 7, 1888. In accordance with the request made, 
a committee was appointed to confer with All Angels’ 
Church, and, to make a long story short, the original 
condition attached to the property was maintained, 
namely, that any church built on that site should be 
forever free. Under that condition All Angels’ Church 
occupies its present site.! 


IThe material for this account has been drawn from the records 
of St. Michael’s Church and St. Michael’s Free Church Society, 


402 Annals of St. Michael’s 


VI. St. Timothy's Church.—About the middle of 
the last century the increase of population for whom 
there was no religious home on the west side of the 
city below 59th Street, a region still regarded as part 
of St. Michael’s parish, led the acting rector of that 
parish to take steps to organize a church in that 
neighborhood. Toward the end of 1852, during Mr. 
Richmond’s absence in Oregon, while he was in charge 
of St. Michael’s and St. Mary’s and rector of All Angels’, 
Rev. T. M. Peters called Rev. James Cole Tracey from 
Cleveland, as his assistant, to undertake missionary 
work in the neighborhood above mentioned, with a 
view to organizing a new church, and to take part in the 
work of the Mission to Public Institutions, which was 
then conducted by the clergy of St. Michael’s parish. 
In the latter work he assisted only for a brief period, 
all his energies being devoted to the establishment of 
the new church. In February of 1853 “a low, ill 
ventilated schoolhouse of clapboards holding scarce 
too people with comfort and located on the north side 
of 53rd Street west of 8th Avenue was rented for $75 
a year.’’ This enterprise was given the name of St. 
Timothy’s Church. In six months’ time the building 
was found insufficient to accommodate the congrega- 
tions, and at the Diocesan Convention that autumn 
Mr. Tracey reports 62 families and 253 individuals 
connected with the church, of whom, however, 29 
only were communicants. A self-supporting parish 
(pay) school had been in existence for four months, 
with 75 scholars, and four lots of ground had been 
offered as a gift for a new church. The church was 
not actually incorporated until February 27, 1854. 


and from personal letters of Rev. Charles E. Phelps, first rector 
of All Angels’ Church after its incorporation. 


The First Report 403 


In the Churchman of July of the same year Mr. Tracey 
writes as follows with regard to the neighborhood to 
which the church ministers. 


I wish to make a statement of factsin regard to this 
new congregation. The district in which it is located has 
been entirely of a missionary character, the City proper 
having advanced its improvements but little further than 
Fifty-first Street, in which Street, near Eighth Avenue, 
the school house stands in which we are worshipping, 
the inhabitants being mostly of the working class. Above 
Twenty-eighth Street and west of Seventh Avenue, there 
is but one Episcopal Church, within the City limits, already 
built, and this church is of the smaller class. 

The extent of territory comprises almost the whole of 
two wards of the city. 


On the death of Mr. Tracey, in 1855, the Rev. Dr. 
_ Howland, then rector of the Church of the Holy Apos- 
tles, suggested an arrangement by which the Church 
of the Holy Apostles might come to the assistance of 
the struggling congregation, namely, the appointment 
of Rev. George Jarvis Geer, assistant minister of the 
Church of the Holy Apostles, to take charge of St. 
Timothy’s Church, the Holy Apostles’ thus paying the 
salary of the minister in charge and St. Timothy’s de- 
fraying the remainder of the expenses. Two years 
later, in 1857, Dr. Geer became rector. The further 
history of the parish and its ultimate union with Zion 
Church do not belong in this article. St. Michael’s 
relation to St. Timothy’s was merely to lay the founda- 
tions, by sending a missionary to organize the church, 
and paying his salary until that was done; the rector 
and some members of the congregation also contribu- 
ting funds for the hiring of a place in which to conduct 
the work. 


a Annals of St: Michael 


VII. Bethlehem Chapel—In another chapter will 
be found a description of the conditions prevailing 
in the squatter settlement which sprang up to the 
west of Eighth Avenue, after the creation of the Park, 
and the manner in which Dr. Peters finally secured a 
footing in that settlement in 1867. Bethlehem Chapel 
was the outcome of the work begun by him in that 
year. In the report of the City Mission Society to 
the Diocesan Convention in 1870 occurs the following 
mention of this work: 


Bethlehem Chapel, the name of our Mission Centre 
among the Germans west of Central Park, is situated on 
gth Avenue between 82d and 83d Streets. Two lots 
were purchased, and a cheap wooden building was erected 
in the autumn of 1869, and used through the winter, until 
found too small and inconvenient for its intended purpose. 
The Ladies’ Industrial Society, connected with the Mission, 
have collected $5000, with which they are erecting a neat 
chapel and school room, the former above the latter. The 
zeal and energy of these ladies, under the superintendence 
of Mrs. Terhune, have added greatly to the effectiveness 
of the Mission. By their visiting, by the Industrial School 
and by their labors in the Sunday School, they have been 
the means of bringing many children and parents to the 
School and Church. The Rev. F. Oertel, who is in charge 
of this Mission, is assisted in the School by Mr. and Mrs. 
Torbeck. Daily, through the larger portion of the year, 
and nightly during autumn, winter and spring, the 
children and young people attend in large numbers the 
School instruction. The whole number actually ministered 
to in the German department of our labors has been 1355. 
With our separate school room and Churchly place of 
worship, we may expect in the future more fellow laborers, 
and, by God’s blessing, we trust, larger results in Christian- 
izing these well nigh heathen people. It is our hope to 
have at the Bethlehem Mission in some not distant day a 


Removal of German Squatters 405 


refuge, which may extend to the Germans the succor 
received by other classes at St. Barnabas. 


From that day until the close of the actual 
mission work the Chapel remained under the super- 
vision and direction of the rector of St. Michael’s, al- 
though at the same time a station of the New York 
Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society. The 
latter institution paid during most or all of the time 
the salary of the German clergyman, St. Michael’s pro- 
viding teachers for the Sunday School and Industrial 
Schools and the greater portion of their support, and 
providing also the superintendence and occasional 
services of its own clergy. In 1886, the poor German 
squatter population having practically entirely disap- 
peared, and a large number of houses having been built 
in that neighborhood by a member of the parish of the 
Incarnation, Dr. Peters suggested to the Rev. Arthur 
Brooks, rector of that church, to take over Bethlehem 
Chapel as a mission of the church of the Incarnation, 
with a view to establishing an independent parish. 
In point of fact Dr. Brooks did for some time hold 
services there, but with results not altogether satis- 
factory to himself. The congregation looked for to 
support the new church did not appear. This plan 
proving unsuccessful the Rev. Mr. Chamberlain, then 
assistant at All Angels’, undertook to gather an inde- 
pendent congregation, if he might have the use of the 
chapel for the purpose. As the result of his efforts 
St. Matthew’s Church was organized in 1887, and 
Bethlehem Chapel leased to it for one dollar. As is 
plain from the above, it is only indirectly, therefore,. 
that St. Michael’s Church can claim any relation to 
the establishment of St. Matthew’s. 

VIII. Church of the Archangel.—By 1887 the popu- 


406 Annals of St. Michael’s 


lation on Harlem plain, north of rroth Street and east 
of Morningside Park, was increasing so rapidly that 
Dr. Peters felt the necessity of taking some steps to pro- 
vide for their spiritual needs. The region was at that 
time quite inaccessible to St. Michael’s Church, and even 
more inaccessible to St. Mary’s, Manhattanville, and 
St. Andrew’s and Holy Trinity, Harlem, the latter 
not yet removed to its present site. Accordingly, Dr. 
Peters engaged the Rev. Montgomery H. Throop, Jr., 
as assistant at St. Michael’s Church and assigned to 
him the especial work of ministering to the people of | 
that region and organizing them, if possible, into a 
church. At the same time he requested several 
members of St. Michael’s parish living nearest that 
region to assist Mr. Throop in his work, and in his 
report to the Convention of 1888 he refers to the serv- 
ices which have been maintained above Central Park, 
“where a new parish is being organized.”’ This work 
was known at first as St. Michael’s Annex, and the 
Year Book and Messengers contain notices of collec- 
tions for the work, and testify to the interest in it felt 
in St. Michael’s parish. The services at that time were 
held in “ Brady’s Hall, on 125th Street.” Later it was 
for a brief period designated as the Church of the 
Advent and on October 9, 1888, St. Michael’s Vestry 
gives formal consent to the organization of the Church 
of the Advent on territory north of r1oth Street and 
east of Morningside Park. The church was actually 
organized in that year, but the name finally adopted 
was the Church of the Archangel. The following report 
of the parish, presented in 1890, gives its history up 
to that date: 


From about October 1, 1887, to about August 1, 1888, 
what is now the Church of the Archangel was a mission 


Archangel’s First Church 407 


of St. Michael’s under the care of the Rev. Montgomery H. 
Throop, at that time assistant minister at St. Michael’s. 
A little before August 1, 1888, under the advice of the 
Rector of St. Michael’s the parish was incorporated. The 
Rey. Charles R. Treat assumed the Rectorship, September 
1, 1888. At that time the congregation was holding 
services in a store on the corner of 117th Street and St. 
Nicholas Avenue, and numbered some ten or fifteen souls. 
The congregation soon became too large to meet in the 
little store, and from January 29, 1889 to June 30, 1889, 
held services in a hall upon 125th St. near Eighth Avenue. 
Two lots were purchased upon St. Nicholas Avenue 
between 117th and 118th Streets and the erection of a 
modest edifice begun. This was occupied for the first 
time, June 30, 1889. It was built with borrowed money, 
and the land was paid for with a purchase money mortgage. 
Therefore, as only a few hundred dollars have been received 
from any outside source, the efforts of the congregation have 
been thus far centered upon the task of self-support and 
payment of debts. 

At date of report, the congregation hold the title upon 
the church, which is valued at $40,000 and we owe only 
about $20,000. There is no floating debt and there has 
never been a debt incurred there through excess of ex- 
penditure over income. 


The Rev. Mr. Treat remained rector only until 
1892. Under his successor the church failed to 
maintain itself and finally, in 1897, the mortgage on 
the property was foreclosed, the building sold to the 
Roman Catholic Church of St. Thomas, and nothing 
remained of the parish except its incorporation and 
some furniture. A canvas of the Assembly District 
of which this region was a part, taken at this period 
under the auspices of the Federation of Churches, showed 
that there was a large and growing population of 
Protestants in this section, and among them a very 


408 Annals of St. Michael’s 


considerable number of Churchmen. So between 7th 
and 8th avenues and rioth and 12oth streets, there 
were reported 1378 families, containing 5318 persons. 
Of these 884 families, containing 3361 persons, were 
Americans; 173 families, of 720 persons, German; 136 
families, of 575 persons, Irish; and 59 families, of 
218 persons, English. There were reported in this 
section 142 Episcopalian families without church 
homes. The remainder of that neighborhood, not 
contained in the 21st Assembly District, and therefore 
not included in this census, was of the same character. 
It was evidently a region which needed and should be 
able to support an Episcopal Church. 

Informed and encouraged by this census, Rev. 
George S. Pratt, then and for ten years preceding 
assistant at St. Michael’s Church, accepted in 1898 
the rectorship of the practically defunct parish of 
the Archangel and undertook to restore it to life, 
holding services first in a hall on 116th Street and 
later in the crypt of the Cathedral. To assist him 
in this enterprise, the Vestry of St. Michael’s Church 
continued him for one year in his position as assistant 
at St. Michael’s, setting him free, however, to devote 
his time to organizing the new parish. How, with 
many sacrifices and much struggle, he succeeded in 
building first a guild house and then a church on St. 
Nicholas Avenue and 115th Street, it is not the province 
of this article to relate. The formal connection of the 
Archangel with St. Michael’s Church ceased in 1899, 
when Mr. Pratt resigned the position of assistant in 
the latter. The intimate relation resulting from affec- 
tion and long service has kept the two parishes in close 
touch ever since. In 1907, All Souls’ Church having 
sold its property on Madison Avenue and combined 


Churches in Oregon 409 


with the Church of the Archangel, the latter as a name 
finally passed out of existence, All Souls’ taking its 
place. 

IX. Trinity Church, Portland, Oregon—For com- 
pleteness sake we may make mention here of Trinity 
Church, Portland, Oregon, inasmuch as it was through 
the loan by St. Michael’s Church of its rector, Rev. 
William Richmond, to the Mission Board to serve 
in Oregon that this church was founded. The ac- 
count of that mission, with the foundation of Trinity 
Church and other churches in Oregon, will be found 
in the chapter on the life of the Rev. William Rich- 
mond, in a previous part of this volume. 


CHAPTER XV 
INSTITUTIONS 


I. The New York Protestant Episcopal City Mis- 
ston Society.— As narrated elsewhere this Society 
was established in 1831 with the Bishop of the Diocese, 
Bishop Onderdonk, as its head, and the rector of 
Grace Church, Dr. Wainwright, as the chairman of its 
Executive Committee, and incorporated in 1833, Gideon 
Lee, a vestryman of St. Michael’s Church, and then 
mayor of the city, being one of the incorporators. 
On the Board of Managers were the rector of St. 
Michael’s and four laymen representing that parish. 
The object of this Society was declared to be 
to provide, by building, purchase, hiring, or otherwise, 
at different points in the City of New York, churches in 
which the seats shall be free, and mission-houses for the 
poor and afflicted; and also to provide suitable clergymen 
and other persons to act as missionaries and assistants 
in and about the said churches and mission houses. 


Its actual work was to establish free churches or 
rather free chapels for people of the middle class who 
were unwilling or unable to pay pew-rent in the churches 
of those days. Sixteen years later this Society passed 
out of existence, the richer churches of New York 
having by that time established free chapels of their 


own, engaged in the support of which they were un- 
410 


—————=— 


Origin of City Mission 4ll 


willing to contribute towards the maintenance of a 
separate organization to provide such chapels. The 
chapels already in existence were, therefore, organized 
as independent churches and left to care for themselves, 
and the Society, having wound up its affairs, ceased 
operations. In that same year, 1847, the Rev. T. M. 
Peters was ordained deacon and became assistant to 
Rey. William Richmond of St. Michael’s and St. Mary’s. 
He thus describes the origin of the new Mission to 
Public Institutions which sprang up in the place of 
the first City Mission Society!: 


Four of five of the City Rectors had at that time adopted 
the practice, then recently introduced, of opening their 
churches for Daily Prayer. 

The late Rev. William Richmond, Rector of St. Michael’s 
Church, Bloomingdale, was stimulated in his devotion 
by the sight of the readiness of men who voluntarily under- 
took a somewhat confining task, far beyond what was 
generally considered a Rector’s or Pastor’s necessary 
duty. ‘‘These Clergy,’ said he, ‘“‘certainly present the 
appearance of a devotion and self-denial above those of 
the larger portion of their brethren.’”’ Mr. Richmond was 
always in sympathy with work and workers as such, yet 
was not altogether of accord in theological sentiment with 
those to whom we now refer. Willing to undertake any 
labor which should redound to the glory of God, or which 
might comfort and strengthen the souls of pilgrim mortals, 
he yet had no inclination to open his church for a Daily 
Service at which but two or three members of the congre- 
gation, and they among the most devout, could or would 
attend. ‘I will not shrink from that labor,” thought he, 
“but will bestow it upon the larger number—upon the 
greater sinner—the neglected outcast.’ He accordingly 
proposed to his Assistant that they should each take from 


1 The Gradual Growth of Charities, a pamphlet printed for the 
City Mission Society in 1873. 


412 Annals of St. Michael’s 


their days at least as many hours as would be occupied 
by the attendance of each at Daily Morning and Evening 
Prayer, and employ that time in Hospitals, alms-houses, 
or Asylums. 


The work thus begun was carried on at first as a 
part of the parochial work of St. Michael’s Church; 
then for a few years upon a larger scale as the Mission 
to Public Institutions, supported partly by contribu- 
tions of members of St. Michael’s parish, partly by 
gifts from outside friends, and partly by an annual 
donation from the Parochial Aid Society. Little by 
little there were added to the staff of St. Michael’s 
Church, by whom the work was first begun, clergymen 
engaged as missionaries, with one or two volunteers, and 
some devoted laymen, who conducted services in the 
different institutions according to a form prepared for 
the purpose by the Rev. T. M. Peters. The first report 
of the Mission to Public Institutions to the Diocesan Con- 
vention was made in 1853, and from that year onward to 
1864 its reports are printed regularly in the Journal. 

By that time the work had became so large that 
it seemed desirable to place it under the charge 
of an incorporated organization immediately re- 
sponsible to the Bishop of the Diocese. The charter 
of the New York Protestant Episcopal City Mission 
Society, secured in 1833, was such an admirable one 
that it seemed best to use that, a few necessary changes 
having been secured from the Legislature, rather than 
to create a new corporation under a new charter. 
Accordingly the New York Protestant Episcopal City 
Mission Society was technically revived, the necessary 
changes in the charter obtained,! and at a meeting 


1The change of charter was not actually obtained until March 
16, 1866. 


A Stigma Removed 413 


held in Calvary Church, in 1864, the Mission to Public 
Institutions went out of existence, the members of 
that mission joining with others invited for the purpose 
to form the new Protestant Episcopal City Mission 
Society. Dr. Peters became the chairman of the 
Executive Committee of the new society, and its prac- 
tical head and director, and such he continued to be 
until the day of his death, combining the charge of this 
great work with his parochial activities at St. Michael’s. 
The effect of the Society upon the Church in New York 
at large is described in its report to the Convention of 
1882 as follows: 

In the distant past, when this work began, ‘‘Our Church,” 
as one truly said, “lay under a sore reproach. It was the 
Church of a class, of the rich and fashionable.” 

This Society undertook to break up that state of things 
and bring “‘our principles, our Prayer-book, our institu- 
tions, to the knowledge of the working classes, and the 
brethren of low degree, by founding and supporting free 
churches, and thus extending the bounds of our Christian 
family.”’ The effort was successful, the stigma was effaced. 
“Not content with this, it held out the arm and hand to 
the poorest and lowest among us, entering in sublime faith, 
self-denial and patience into the darkest and saddest of 
all the ways of misery, vice and sin.” 

It may be added that the stigma of being the Church 
of a class, of the rich and fashionable, has been re- 
moved largely through the work of St. Michael’s 
parish and its rectors. 

At the time of Dr. Peters’s death the Executive Com- 
mittee of the City Mission Society spread this beau- 
tiful minute upon their records: 

In loving memory of the Ven. Thomas McClure Peters, 
S. T. D., Archdeacon of New York, the executive committee 
of the City Mission Society place this minute upon the 


414 Annals of St. Michael’s 


journal of their proceedings. A long life, devoted to the 
service of God, the Church and his brethren, forms the 
happy record of this faithful priest and pastor. Born 
June 6, 1821, he left us Aug. 13, 1893, having more than 
fulfilled the three-score years and ten, his eye undimmed 
and his natural force unabated. Up to the last day of his 
life he was in the full exercise of his varied offices of religion, 
charity and mercy, and his departure realized Bishop 
Andrews’s description of an enviable transit, being “‘ with- 
out sin, without shame and without pain.” Lying down 
to rest, after a day of activity, he slept, and, so far as is 
known, without a struggle or a pang, he passed into the 
light of the presence of the Master. 

Dr. Peters was graduated at Yale, and received from that 
ancient university the honor of the doctorate in theology. 
He studied at the General Theological Seminary, and was 
enrolled among its eminent alumni. He began his work as 
a lay reader in the parish of St. Michael in 1842, became in 
time its rector, kept the fiftieth anniversary of his connec- 
tion with the parish, December, 1892. He had no other 
parochial connection; he was identified with St. Michael’s 
for half a century. He was constant in devotion to the 
work of Church extension, and for many years prac- 
tically the head of the City Mission Society. In the year 
1891 he was elected a member of the Standing Committee 
of the Diocese of New York, and in 1892, upon the resig- 
nation of the Ven. Alex. Mackay-Smith and his removal 
to Washington, Dr. Peters was appointed Archdeacon 
of New York, an office which he was peculiarly qualified 
to fill. He was also connected with the “‘House of Rest 
for Consumptives,’’ where his services and counsel were 
highly valued. 

But perhaps in all his varied work none was more 
sympathetically and affectionately done than that among 
the children. It was he who founded “The Sheltering 
Arms.”’ He also saved “The Children’s Fold” at a critical 
moment in which, but for his interposition and skilful 


——————— 


A Christian Funeral 415 


conduct of affairs, it would have disappeared from the list 
of our Church charities; he was at the same time in charge 
of another institution of the same class, the ‘“‘Shepherd’s 
Fold.”” In the Leake and Watts Orphan House, situated 
very near St. Michael’s Church, he took a deep interest, 
and was for many years a power in that admirable institu- 
tion, though not officially connected with it; he was the 
confidant of the superintendent, Mr. Guest, the welcomed 
counsellor and adviser of the trustees, and the personal 
and faithful friend of the little objects of the trust, to whom 
he gave a cordial welcome in his parish church, where, until 
the removal to Yonkers, the officers and inmates were 
regular attendants. 

Blessed indeed is he who has left such a record wherefrom 
to weave a laurel wreath for his monument. And happy 
a transit such as his, in which was found no trace of the 
“pains of death.” 

That our departed brother was thoroughly conversant 
with the details of business, a distinctly practical person, 
might be inferred from the successful manner in which his 
affairs were conducted. Those who knew him most inti- 
mately knew best how even was his temper, how calmly 
and equably life flowed on for him. Up to the end all 
went on after that fashion, and the ending was in exact 
harmony with all that preceded. 

He was taken away in the summertide, when days are 
long and the air is balmy and the sunshine is warm, and all 
nature is aglow. They who had the privilege of attend- 
ing his funeral may have remarked the singular character 
which invested the ceremonies; they may have felt as if 
they were at a bridal rather than at a burial. The chancel 
was a bower of fragrance and floral beauty, the music was 
bright and joyful, the body lay beneath a mass of roses; 
even the vestments of the clergy bespoke a festal character. 
The crowded church was filled in great measure with the 
working classes and the poor; women were there with 
little babies in their arms; detachments of children from 


416 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the several charitable homes of which he was the head; 
clergymen in great numbers walked in procession; prelates 
of the Church, all personally devoted to him, conducted 
the services, and two of them laid his head in the ground of 
St. Michael’s Cemetery. As the body was borne from the 
church, poor men, standing in double ranks, uncovered 
and tears were flowing fast. It was a tribute which many 
a worker in the Church might envy. 


‘“‘ Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last 
end be like his!” 


II. House of Mercy.—In the course of his ministra- 
tions among the outcasts of Blackwell’s Island, Mr. 
Richmond found many young women and girls who had 
made but the first step in the road to temporal and 
eternal ruin. There were difficulties in the way of re- 
claiming these wanderers, which he thought would be in 
some measure overcome, or at least lessened, could he 
bring proper female influence to second his warnings and 
teachings. To accomplish this end, and aid in saving 
souls, in the year 1854, Mrs. Richmond offered herself for 
this work, to which were devoted the remaining eleven 
years of her life. 


She soon found that her work with the girls and 
women in the Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island was 
useless unless she could provide a home for them to 
go to in Manhattan when they were discharged. Ac- 
cordingly she rented a house on Jauncey’s Lane, near 
Eighth Avenue; but scarcely had it been rented when 
the city condemned the land for the Park, and she 
had to vacate. Another house was rented in Man- 
hattanville, 


1 Gradual Growth of Charities. Mrs. Richmond actually began 
her work as reader and visitor in the Penitentiary in the latter part 
of 1853. 


House of Mercy 417 


and with the help of a few friends fitted conveniently for 
her purposes at considerable expense, with furnace, water, 
etc. When the alterations were nearly completed, the 
carelessness of the workmen set fire to the building, and 
left Mrs. Richmond not only without a house, but with the 
rent to pay for a whole year to come, for that which the 
flames had destroyed. Under such disaster and discour- 
agement probably few would have had the heart to try 
again. Mrs. Richmond had, however, faith in God. She 
believed He had called her to this work, and would reward 
her labors with success. She looked for the speedy coming 
of the Messenger to bid her go on, and speedily he came. 

Admiration for her indomitable perseverance, and an 
interest in the proposed project of attempted reformation, 
prompted a servant of Christ to authorize her, at his cost, 
to rent the summer country-seat of one of our ex-mayors- 
As the mansion was more desirable both for itself and its 
location, and as the place had two small cottages and out- 
buildings, giving it further advantage over the former 
house, the mourned loss proved almost an immediate gain 
to her work. 


By this time the House of Mercy, which had been 
incorporated in 1855, and placed by the Legislature 
on a peculiar footing, as an agency of reformation 
recognized by the State, had a board of trustees con- 
sisting of five gentlemen. In 1859 they purchased 
the mansion of a former vestryman of St. Michael’s, 
Mr. Howland, on 86th Street and North River. This 
was supposed to be capable of receiving about rI00 
persons. Thither Mrs. Richmond transferred her pen- 
itents, with whom she had come to live after the death 
of her husband, and there for some years she dwelt 
with the lost whom she sought to save. Through those 
earlier years of its existence the institution depended 
almost entirely upon her exertions for its support. 


418 Annals of St. Michael’s 


She begged the money for its maintenance in counting 
houses, in the street, from door to door. Little by 


little, however, friends were raised up for it, the board — 


of trustees was enlarged, and in 1860 an associate board 
of ladies was formed to help in raising funds. Finally, 
in 1863, Mrs. Richmond turned over the care of this 
institution to Dr. Peters, who placed it under the 
direction of the “‘Sisters.’’ During all this period the 
rector of St. Michael’s Church had been the chaplain 
of the institution. Mr. Richmond had conducted 
daily prayers at the House of Mercy as long as his 
strength permitted. In fact he regarded the institu- 
tion as a component part of his parish, and so 
reported it to Convention. After his death Dr. 
Peters continued to visit it almost daily, until his 
growing cares obliged him to resign the chaplaincy, 


in which, about 1869, he was succeeded by Dean Sey- | 


mour, afterwards Bishop of Springfield. After this 
the institution as such has no further direct connection 
with St. Michael’s Church or its clergy; but St. Michael’s 


has always continued to be represented on the Ladies’ — 


Committee of the institution. 


III. St. Barnabas’s House and Midnight Mission. — — 
When Mrs. Richmond left the House of Mercy she did — 


so only to undertake a further task in the same field. 


Many who had sought her Home of penitence came © 


from the streets of the distant City really desirous of 


reform. She thought, ‘There may be others left behind — 


them, less determined to do well, but who would enter a 


home of refuge from sin, if it stood in their daily path, — 


inviting their entrance in any short moment of disgust 
or remorse.’’ There had by this time become associated 
with Mrs. Richmond many ladies, as well as a large Board 
of Trustees, and seeing her first charity—“The House ot 
Mercy’’—firmly established, she resigned her superintend- 


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St. Barnabas’s House 419 


ence of it, that she might be free to make a more direct 
attack upon the strongholds of Satan. She went down 
to the very haunts of sin and hired a house, and set its 
doors ever open, and trod the streets by night, to find 
guests to fill its chambers. 


This she called the Home of the Homeless. Having 
begun the work, and shown both its practicability 
and its necessity, she turned it over, in 1865, to the 
recently established City Mission Society, which re- 
christened it St. Barnabas’s House. It was soon found 
that there were multitudes in this city innocent of 
any crime but homelessness. These were brought to 
St. Barnabas’s House by the police, or directed thither 
by friends. Women applied for admission when 
discharged from hospitals cured, but too feeble for 
work. It was obviously undesirable to mingle to- 
gether such persons and the women in need of moral 
reform, for whom the house at 304 Mulberry Street 
was originally established. In 1867, therefore, St. Bar- 
nabas’s House was appropriated to those who were 
only homeless, and the Midnight Mission was opened, 
through the efforts of the Rev. Mr. Hilliard and Dr. 
Peters, at 260 Green Street, for the reception of the 
penitent Magdalens. The connection of St. Barnabas’s 
House, now part of the City Mission Society’s work, 
and of the Midnight Mission, later taken over by the 
Sisters of St. John Baptist, with St. Michael’s Church is, 
of course, indirect, but both of them did, in fact, originate 
in the work of the rector and members of that parish. 

IV. New York Infant Asylum.—When Mrs. Rich- 
mond turned St. Barnabas’s House over to the City 
Mission Society, she undertook still a new work. 


Her experience had shown her that there should be 
a home to receive the unwedded, expectant mother, not 


420 Annals of St. Michael’s 


only and chiefly to save the child from abandonment 
or violent death, but for the mother’s sake, that, through 
maternal love, she might be won to the heavenly love, 
and eternally saved. 

She went to Albany, during the session of the Legislature, 
and by her persistence obtained from unconcerned men 
the admirable charter of the Infant Asylum. In the 
neighborhood of New York she hired a large house and 
grounds, and, with the hand of death upon her, began 
to gather in the intended occupants of this new home, 
and herself to beg, and give, the money required for its 
maintenance. In the remaining months of her life she 
received one hundred and fifty of these children, who 
would never know a father’s care, and sheltered and 
prayed for, and strove with, as many of the mothers as she 
could induce to share this home with her. 


Mrs. Richmond started the Infant Asylum in the 
colonial house then known as Woodlawn, a rambling 
old mansion, with various outbuildings, standing in a 
beautiful wood, fronting on what is now Broadway, 
at 1o6th and io7th streets, and stretching down to 
the river. She was at this time dying of cancer, and 
her heroism in undertaking this work in the pain of 
that sickness was beyond words. Suffering almost 
constantly she yet was able, by God’s blessing, in 
the short time left to her, to place this, her last institu- 
tion, on so firm a foundation that others could take 
up and carry on the work after her death. She died 
in St. Luke’s Hospital, January 1, 1866. Further 
history of this institution, the receiving and city de- 
partment of which is located at 61st Street and Tenth 
Avenue, is not a part of the annals of St. Michael’s. 

V. The Sheltering Arms—tIn connection with the 
work of the City Mission Society, committees of ladies 
were organized to visit the City Prison and various 


Need for a New Asylum an 


city institutions in concert with the missionaries. In 
the City Prison 


they found from time to time mothers committed for 
drunkenness, who were sent to Blackwell’s Island. Some 
of these women had children, who, by the removal of 
their mothers, were deprived of all care. Even in their 
degradation, these unhappy mothers had some human- 
ity left, and were concerned for their children’s welfare. 
“They literally lay their children at our feet,” said one of 
the visiting ladies, “‘imploring us to find them a home.” 
At about the same time, there was brought to the notice of 
another lady of the same Society a little blind girl, deserted 
by her parents, without friends, and not of an age to be- 
received at the Blind Asylum. Shortly after, a home was 
sought, by a working man, for an incurable, motherless, 
crippled boy. As there was no hope of his restoration, no 
then existing Hospital or Institution would receive him. 
Further inquiry resulted in the unexpected discovery that 
there were in the City of New York, and out of it, large 
numbers of children, who, though surrounded by many 
Asylums, were yet without a home, because needing some 
necessary qualification for admission to Institutions al- 
ready established. It was also ascertained in the course 
of these inquiries, that there were many cases of neglect 
of children, owing to the usual requirements of our char- 
itable Institutions that their inmates should be formally 
surrendered to the Trustees. 


Asylums for the blind and the deaf mutes received 
inmates only after a certain age. Where were the 
poor homeless children to spend their earlier years? 
There were hospitals for sick and crippled children, 
if curable, but incurables could not be admitted. 
Some institutions received half-orphans or poor children 
free, on condition that they be surrendered to the 
institution, but many parents in pressing need of 


422 Annals of St. Michael’s 


temporary assistance were unwilling to surrender their 
children irrevocably. Moreover a half-orphan asylum 
could not receive children of a father deserted by his 
wife, nor of a mother abandoned by her husband, nor 
of parents who were both sick and in the hospital. 
There were hundreds of cases in which the family 
was abandoned by the father, thus throwing the support 
of the children upon the mother and obliging her, 
perhaps, to break up the household and go out herself 
to service. 


If she could place her children for a few months or a 
year in good hands and under Christian training she would 
gladly do so, provided that when able she might claim 
them again; ‘‘but I cannot,” said one of those deserted 
mothers, “‘sign away my own flesh and blood.” 


His work in the City Mission Society brought Dr. 
Peters directly into contact with all those cases. It 
became clear to him that, in spite of his objection to 
multiplying institutions, it was necessary to establish 
a new institution to care for the children for whom 
no other institution would provide, making its rules 
sufficiently broad to enable it to supplement the work 
of all other institutions for children. Accordingly, in 
1864, he called together, in his own house in Bloom- 
ingdale a little company of those who he thought 
would be interested in such an enterprise, and pro- 
posed to them the establishment of an institution 
where ‘“‘the only qualification for the admission of 
a child shall be, that it is not entitled to recep- 
tion elsewhere, and that, in the Institution there is 
a vacant bed: the children cared for there belong to 
their parents, not to the Institution, and can be claimed 
by parents at will: by the introduction of the Cottage 
system the children are to be distributed into separate 


The Sheltering Arms Opened 423 


families with a responsible head over each.’”’ He had 
already conferred with the “Sisters,” who were willing 
and ready to undertake charge of this work; and to 
make this charity possible he offered his own house 
free of rent for a term of ten years. A board of trustees 
was at once formed, and on October 6, 1864, The Shel- 
tering Arms, the origin of the name of which institution 
is related elsewhere, was opened with all its 40 beds 
taken up, and Sister Sarah in immediate charge of the 
institution. In 1866 another building was erected 
by the trustees, at an expense of $10,000, and the num- 
ber of children increased to go, the annual expenses of 
the institution being at this time about $11,000. 

The opening of the Boulevard compelled the removal 
of The Sheltering Arms, in 1869, to its present site at 
129th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. By this time 
the institution had attained considerable popularity 
as meeting a much-felt want, and a great bazaar was 
organized, to provide and equip new buildings adapted 
to its needs, the principal promoter being Col. James 
Montgomery, brother of one of the trustees, Rev. Dr. 
Montgomery, Rector of the Church of the Incarnation. 
Almost all of the churches in the city became interested 
in this bazaar, which was with one exception the 
largest ever undertaken in the city of New York, realiz- 
ing something like $40,000 for the institution, besides 
bringing it prominently before the attention of the 
community. This had, however, one unfortunate 
result. The Sisters had become, since the organiza- 
tion of the Sisterhood, very ritualistic. The pub- 
licity given to The Sheltering Arms called attention 
to this fact. Inquisitive and gossipy people circu- 
lated all sorts of stories regarding them and their 
doings, which found their way shortly into the 


424 Annals of St. Michael’s 


public press. Finally matters reached such a pass 
that the rectors of several of the most prominent 
churches in the city asked the trustees to make an 
investigation, with a view to the removal of the Sisters. 
The president and trustees of the institution stood by 
the Sisters in spite of the threatened and to some 
extent actual withdrawal of financial support, but the 
Sisters, at this juncture, apparently through some mis- 
conception of the situation, by advice of their spiritual 
head, suddenly withdrew from the institution, almost 
without notice, at Easter of 1870. The result was, 
for the moment, chaos in the internal administration 
of the institution, which was relieved by the kindly 
aid of some Sisters of St. John who came on from 
Washington to help out in the emergency. Dr. Peters 
had for some time felt that some such catastrophe was 
impending, and made such arrangements in advance 
that within a short time Miss Sarah S. Richmond, 
daughter of the Rev. James C. Richmond, a former 
rector of this parish, was put in charge of the institu- 
tion, of which she continued superintendent until her 
death, December 21, 1906, when she was succeeded by 
her sister, Miss Katharine Richmond. 

Of all his work, The Sheltering Arms was probably the 
nearest to the heart of Dr. Peters. It was also very 
close to the life of the parish. Two of the vestrymen 
of St. Michael’s Church, James Punnett and Dr. D. 
T. Brown, were among the incorporators, and the 
list of its trustees includes not a few who have been or 
still are on the vestry of this parish. The institution 
itself was an integral part of the parochial work of 
this church, so continuing even after its removal to 
Manhattanville. 

The removal to Manhattanville, and the erection of 


—— 


An Uninstitutional Institution 425 


the new buildings, which now house almost 200 children, 
rendered possible the introduction of the so-called 
cottage plan, first adopted by Wichern, in the famous 
Rauhes Haus, at Hamburg. The Sheltering Arms 
was one of the first institutions in this country, if 
not the first, to adopt and adapt this system, and in 
this and other particulars, including its name, it 
has been widely imitated. Aiming to make The Shel- 
tering Arms as uninstitutional as possible, in order 
to counteract the de-individualizing effects of institu- 
tional life, Dr. Peters and the trustees not only adopted 
the cottage plan, of smaller groups living in families 
under the care of their own house-mothers, but also 
did away with uniforms, sent the children to the Public 
Schools, encouraged frequent visits from and free 
intercourse with parents and friends, and in every way 
sought to maintain normal relations between the 
children under their care and the outside worid. In 
1874 Dr. Peters established The Sheltering Arms Paper, 
which continued to be published until 1900, as a means 
of reporting the affairs of the institution to its numer- 
ous friends and securing continually new supporters, 
and also of spreading general charitable information 
and attracting attention to the charitable needs of the 
city at large. He himself contributed numerous 
sketches and letters to this paper, which was edited 
by one of his daughters, Miss L. Peters. One feature 
of the paper was its charity list, compiled by Rev. 
C. T. Ward, assistant at St. Michael’s, which was the 
first attempt at a systematic reporting of the charities 
and charitable interests of New York City. 

At Dr. Peters’s death, in 1893, he was succeeded in the 
presidency of the institution by Mr. William Alexander 
Smith, who had not only been concerned with him in 


426 Annals of St. Michael’s 


the founding of The Sheltering Arms, but who had also 
from the outset been a fellow-worker with him in the 
Mission to Public Institutions and the City Mission 
Society. Ten years later Mr. Smith resigned and was 
succeeded by Dr. Peters’s eldest son, William Richmond 
Peters, Senior Warden of St. Michael’s Church. 

VI. Sisterhood of St. Mary. As has been narrated 
in a previous chapter, after the dissolution of Dr. Muhlen- 
berg’s Sisterhood of the Holy Communion, Dr. Peters 
put some of the former members of that Sisterhood 
in charge first of the House of Mercy and then of The 
Sheltering Arms, giving them, at the same time, work 
of a more parochial character, nursing and the like, 
in St. Michael’s parish. Two years later five of these 
ladies were formally organized into the Sisterhood 
of St. Mary, and set apart for their work by the Rt. 
Rev. Horatio Potter, Bishop of New York, in St. 
Michael’s Church, on the Feast of the Purification, 
February 2, 1865. By Dr. Peters’s suggestion and 
advice the Rev. Dr. Dix, rector of Trinity Church, 


became the spiritual adviser of the Sisterhood. Dr. 


Peters continued to serve for some years as the chap- 
lain of the House of Mercy, and he was also both the 
spiritual and administrative head of The Sheltering 
Arms and St. Barnabas’s House, which latter institution 
had been added to the other two institutions under the 
care of the Sisters in 1865. ‘The Sisters rapidly de- 
veloped ritualistic tendencies, adopting a more elaborate 
dress, more rigid rules, and a more medieval con- 
ception of their vows. This led to criticism on the 
part of some of the directors of the City Mission Society, 
resulting in their withdrawal in 1867 from St. Bar- 
nabas’s House, where they were replaced (until 1886) 
by the Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd, organized 


THE PRESENT RECTORY 
House in which Bloomingdale Day Nursery was Founded 
Old Tavern Altered and Enlarged 


Reorganization of Clinic 427 


on the same plan on which the Sisterhood of St. 
Mary was originally organized, so far as costumes 
and vows are concerned. In 1870 they withdrew 


- from The Sheltering Arms, and the connection of 


the Sisterhood with St. Michael’s Church, where it 
was originally organized and in which the first five 
Sisters were set apart, came to an end; only the Sisters 
are still laid to rest, when their earthly labors are ended 
in St. Michael’s Cemetery. One sweet memento of the 
connection of the Sisterhood with St. Michael’s re- 
mains to us in the shape of a spoon for the Communion 
service presented by Sister Sarah in 1864. 

VII. Bloomingdale Clinic. In 1891 four physicians, 
Drs. TenEyck, Ware, Tracy, and Stevenson, practising 
in the general neighborhood of the church, organized 
a clinic and engaged a room on Amsterdam Avenue. 
Perceiving the benefit of such work for the poor of the 
parish, the Rector of St. Michael’s Church joined with 
them, agreeing to pay one half of the rent. Later he 
gave the Clinic at a nominal rent a room in Lyceum 
Hall, on goth Street, and when the church acquired 
that building for a temporary parish house, in 1893, 
it made the Clinic a free tenant. Other expenses the 
doctors paid out of their own pockets or begged from 
their friends. When the new Parish House was pro- 
jected, a fine clinic was contained in the plan. This 
attracted the attention of the late Mrs. Margaret 
Clendining Lawrence, of the Church of the Incarnation, 
a granddaughter of John Clendining and Margaret his 
wife, parishioners of St. Michael’s Church in the first 
half of the nineteenth century, and as a memorial 
to her grandmother she gave $500 towards furnishing 
the Clinic. The rooms designed for the Clinic were 
not included in the first part of the Parish House, built 


428 Annals of St. Michael’s 


in 1897, and the Clinic was housed temporarily in the 
old choir room beneath the vestry room in the Church. 
In 1900 only two of the original four doctors remained, 
namely E. J. Ware and Thomas Stevenson, Jr. The 
Clinic was re-organized; Dr. John McBarron, Dr. 
McNeil, and Dr. J. L. Adams were added to the staff, 
eye, ear, and throat departments created, and a salaried 
attendant engaged. Up to that time the Clinic had 
treated every year from goo to 1200 cases of very poor 
people. After the reorganization the number of cases 
increased considerably. Accordingly in 1902, when the 
remaining portion of the Parish House was built, clinic 
and consulting rooms very much more elaborate than 
originally planned were provided by the donor in the 
basement of that building, and the Clinic installed 
there. In the following year 1903, it reported 4679 
cases of poor people treated. 

While housed by St. Michael’s the Clinic up 
to this time was merely a voluntary association of 
physicians whose work was recognized and assisted 
by St. Michael’s Church on account of its value to 
the poor. With the passage of the new law govern- 
ing clinics and dispensaries, in 1905, it became 
necessary for the Church to assume direct respon- 
sibility, and since that date the Bloomingdale Clinic 
has been officially a part of the parish organization, 
with the rector of the parish as its corporate head. 
The physicians on the staff of the Clinic at the present 
time are Dr. E. J. Ware, Dr. John McBarron, and 
Dr. John L. Adams, Dr. E. J. Ware, a member of the 
Vestry, being the actual head of the Clinic. 

VIII. Bloomingdale Day Nursery. For the sake of 
completeness, a few more institutions should be men- 
tioned here, whose connection with St. Michael’s is 


A Neighborhood Work 429 


not so direct as that of the preceding. It has been 
the object of the present rector, so far as possible, to 
organize neighborhood associations for those works 
which can and should be undertaken by the whole 
community, St. Michael’s Church giving such assistance 
as lies in its power, but not undertaking the work as 
parochial work or claiming exclusive control. 

In the year book of 1894 one of the needs to which 
the attention of the congregation was called was a Day 
Nursery and Kindergarten. The public schools did 
not at that time provide for the instruction of the 
youngest children. In the case of poor families, where 
the mothers had to go out to work, the lack of some 
place to which to send the little children was a real 
hardship, both to the mothers and the children. Either 
the children had to be left to play on the street all 
day or be shut up in the apartment. Where the chil- 
dren were still younger the hardship was even greater. 
We found many cases where the mother might be able 
to work for the support of the family, if there were some 
place in which she could leave her little baby, too im- 
mature even for a kindergarten, during working hours. 
With what she could earn she could not afford to pay 
to have the child cared for by some person hired for the 
purpose. What was needed was a créche or day nursery. 
Several ladies in St. Michael’s Church became interested 
in this field and offered either to work in the day nur- 
sery, if one could be started, or to give money towards 
its support. 

A meeting was finally called at one of the buildings 
then used as a temporary parish house, the present 
rectory, in which were included not only ladies from St. 
Michael’s Church but also ladies from the Protestant 
churches in the neighborhood, from the Roman Catho- 


430 Annals of St. Michael’s 


lic Church of the Holy Name, and others. As a result 
of this meeting, the Bloomingdale Day Nursery and 
Kindergarten was organized in 1895, with a board of 
trustees, of which Mrs. John P. Peters, of St. Michael’s, 
was the president, representing the community at large, 
there being, in addition to the representatives of all 
the Christian churches hereabouts, a prominent Jewish 
lady on the board. In addition an advisory committee 
ot men was formed, of which one of the vestrymen of 
this church was made chairman. St. Michael’s Church 
gave free of rent the use of the building in which the 
meeting was held, then known as 223 West goth Street, 
and there for about a year the Bloomingdale Day 
Nursery and Kindergarten was housed. Later the 
trustees rented a house on goth Street, east of 
Amsterdam Avenue, No. 154, and there the Day 
Nursery is still located, being now the owner of the 
building. With the extension of age in the public 
schools downward, the kindergarten became unneces- 
sary and was dropped. The present corporate title 
of the institution is The Bloomingdale Day Nursery, 
and the president of the institution at the present time 
is Mrs. Richard L. Hartley, wife of the pastor of Hope 
Baptist Church. 

The Day Nursery does a valuable work for the 
neighborhood in general, and for many of the poor 
women of this parish in particular. As a neighbor- 
hood institution it has no direct connection with 
this church, but we view it with peculiar affection 
as an institution in whose founding we were concerned. 
Some of the members of this parish are on its board 
of trustees, some are contributors to its support, and 
every Christmas the children of the Sunday School 
make a donation in kind, bringing and presenting at 


_ = 


Instigating a Library 431 


the altar condensed milk, cereals, soap, toys, and every- 
thing that in their judgment and in the judgment of 
their mothers is desirable for the little children in 
The Bloomingdale Day Nursery. 

IX. Bloomingdale Free Circulating Library. Inthe 
same year in which attention was called to the need 
of a Day Nursery and Kindergarten in the year book of 
the parish attention was also called to the need of a 
Parish Library. As a result the year book of 1895 
reports the organization of such a library, entitled 
St. Michael’s Free Circulating Library, the libraries 
of the various guilds of the parish having been con- 
solidated to form the nucleus of the same. This library 
contained about 700 volumes, largely standard works, 
but with very few recent books. It was lodged in one of 
the buildings used as a temporary parish house, 223 
West goth Street, and was opened on Tuesdays from 
7 tog P.M. and Fridays from 3 to 5 p.m. There was 
at that time no library of any sort in this neighborhood, 
that is to say outside of the Sunday School libraries 
of the various churches. St. Michael’s Free Circulat- 
ing Library was a very feeble attempt to provide 
a library not only for the parish but also for the 
neighborhood. One of our vestrymen, Mr. Berrien 
Keyser, was particularly interested in this work and 
gave his services in organizing and conducting the 
library. We hoped to develop it in due time, and in 
the Parish House plans adopted at that time we laid out 
an especially large and fine room for our library. It 
was a hard task raising money for that Parish House, 
and it was evidently going to be a still harder task to 
raise the money to support it when built. When 
should we have our library established on a really 
worthy basis to serve the neighborhood? 


432 Annals of St. Michael’s 


At this time the New York Free Circulating Library 
was establishing libraries in various parts of the city, 
and as it appeared to Mr. Keyser and the rector that the 
Bloomingdale neighborhood was sufficiently important 
to render it advisable to establish a branch here, they 
decided to lay the whole case before the authorities of 
that institution. The case was accordingly presented 
to the head librarian and by him to the trustees. The 
church offered to provide rooms for the library in one 
of the buildings used by it as a temporary parish house, 
to give to the library all of the books in its possession, 
and to guarantee if necessary to raise a thousand dollars 
additional toward the expenses in the first year of its 
existence. After a careful examination of the neigh- 
borhood, on the recommendation of the head librarian, 
the trustees of the library decided to try the experiment. 
They accepted the books from St. Michael’s Church and 
the use of the quarters offered for a month or so, to 
enable the librarians to do the necessary work of bind- 
ing, cataloguing, etc., but hired permanent quarters in 
the immediate neighborhood of St. Michael’s, on the 
corner of tooth Street and Amsterdam Avenue, and 
started there in 1896 the new branch of the New York 
Free Circulating Library. They did not exact the 
money guarantee which the church had offered, but in 
point of fact some hundreds of dollars were collected 
in the church or from its friends in the neighborhood 
for the library. The experiment proved so successful, 
this branch having a larger circulation in the second 
year than any branch in the city, that the trustees 
proceeded to erect a fine building on 1ooth Street just 
behind St. Michael’s Parish House. The name given 
to the library, at our suggestion, was The Bloomingdale 
Branch of the New York Free Circulating Library. 


Out-of-door Playgrounds — 433 


As soon as the Bloomingdale Library was started, it 
being the judgment of the rector of this church that 
the day of the old-fashioned Sunday School library for 
Sunday School children had passed, the books of St. 
Michael’s Sunday School library, about 400 in number, 
were also passed over to the Bloomingdale Library on 
condition that it should be opened Sunday afternoons; 
and it was in fact so opened for some years, until the 
reduction of the city appropriation rendered it unable 
to pay for the extra work. The relation of this institu- 
tion to St. Michael’s, as will be seen, is only one of 
instigation, with some slight assistance and support. 

X. Neighborhood Social and Industrial Club. In 
1898 a young lady of the neighborhood, represent- 
ing the Playground Committee of the Social Reform 
Club, called on the rector to ask his assistance 
in providing an out-of-door playground for children. 
The previous year a Bulgarian, Mr. Tzanoff, had 
started a movement in Philadelphia to utilize the 
grounds about the schoolhouses and the vacant lots 
for playgrounds in order to take the children off 
the streets. There were placed sandheaps, awnings, 
benches, parallel bars, and similar simple and inex- 
pensive equipment, and kindergartners, inspectors, and 
helpers were provided to overlook the sports, keep order, 
and play with the children. It proved an admirable 
work, a great blessing to working mothers who were 
able to take or send little children to these playgrounds 
while they themselves went out to work for the day; a 
boon to sick and weakly and lonesome children who 
found there rest, and sports in which they might take 
part; and a humanizing and elevating influence for 
the coarse children who form street gangs largely be- 
cause they do not know anything better to do with 


434 Annals of St. Michael’s 


themselves. The plan having proved so successful 
in Philadelphia, Mr. Tzanoff was trying to do the same 
thing for New York and the Social Reform Club, of 
which the rector was himself a member, was supporting 
him in his effort, having appointed a committee for 
that purpose. 


After an investigation of all the available vacant . 


lots in the neighborhood, we secured from the owner 
the use of the block between Amsterdam Avenue 
and Broadway and 94th and gsth streets. A committee 
of the local auxiliary of the Federation of Churches was 
formed and a playground was conducted for about 
two months in that summer for some 1200 children. 
Then an association was formed to provide out-of- 
door playgrounds in the future, with a member of St. 
Michael’s Church, the late Mrs. George E. Poole, at 
its head, succeeded later by Mrs. Clarence Burns, and 
for a number of years such playgrounds were provided, 
first, at the site above named, and then on twelve lots 
on the south side of 99th Street between Amsterdam 
Avenue and Columbus Avenue, property belonging to 
the Merriam estate. The number of children cared 
tor at the last-named site reached 3000. The police 
testified to the admirable result of the work done by 
the out-of-door playgrounds in reducing the number 
of petty thefts and the annoyances of one sort and 
another by children in the streets, and the shopkeepers 
of the neighborhood, appreciating the advantage of 
the playground to them in this direction, were among 
the contributors to its support. The work was so 
evidently needed and accomplished such good results 
that finally the Board of Education was induced to 
take it up and establish summer schools and play- 
grounds at different points throughout the city. This, 


‘ 
4 


The Neighborhood Club 435 


with the building up of the vacant lots in this neigh- 
borhood, led finally to the abandonment of the play- 
ground itself in 1904. During part of this time the 
playground had been connected with the local auxiliary 
of the Federation of Churches, of which the rector 
of St. Michael’s was president; and during the whole 
period the rector of St. Michael’s Church had guaran- 
teed any deficit, and the meetings of the organization 
had been held in St. Michael’s Parish House. 

The experiences of the playground demonstrated 
the need of clubs and associations for both boys and 
girls of the neighborhood who were not included in 
church organizations already existing. The boys, 
as they grew up, became hoodlums, simply because 
they had no place to play, and no proper channel into 
which to direct their energies. The attempt to provide 
club rooms and an organization for them has not up 
to the present met with success, partly from a lack of 
the right sort of workers. In the case of the girls, 
the ladies found that as they began to go into employ- 
ment, first as cash girls and then as shop girls, they 
needed and sought places of amusement in the even- 
ings, and that not a few of them were beginning to fre- 
quent the dance halls which were springing up in 
connection with saloons, especially in the neighborhood 
of 110th Street. The rector of this church offered the 
Parish House one evening a week as a club house for 
these girls if the ladies would form an organization 
to take care of them, provide proper amusement, 
classes of instruction for those who needed it, and the 
like. At first the ladies feared lest, many of the girls 
being Roman Catholics by origin and in name, they 
might refuse to come into a building which belonged 
to a Protestant Church. After some hesitation, how- 


436 Annals of St. Michael’s 


ever, no other place being available, they agreed to 
make the experiment. It soon proved that no such 
prejudice existed and three years ago the Neighborhood 


Social and Industrial Club was organized, Mrs. Clarence © 


Burns at its head, with a membership of 210 girls. 
Here the girls, none or almost none of whom belong 
to this church, meet one evening in each week to attend 
classes, dance or have a good time as the case may 
be. 

One incident will show what this Club and the Parish 
House where it meets mean in the lives of some of these 
girls. A girl whom the clergy of this parish did not know 
came here with a young man to be married. It turned 
out that, having come to this city from Connecticut to 
work in a factory, without home or friends or any place 
to spend her evenings, she had somehow found her 
way into the Neighborhood Club. Now that she was 
to be married she had come back to be married in 
the one place which had stood in her experience for 
healthful and pleasant associations. Before she was 
married she took the young man around the Parish 
House from place to place, telling him what she had 
done here and what she had learned there, and the good 
times she had enjoyed in another place. 

At her death Mrs. Poole left a legacy of $2000 to 
this Club, and the intention of the trustees is, as soon 
as sufficient funds are raised, to hire or purchase a 
building of their own, as a club-house, continuing 
probably to use the auditorium of the Parish House 
for larger gatherings once a week or less frequently 
as the case may be. 

XI. Bloomingdale District Nurse Association.—This 
Association was organized in 1905, at the suggestion 
of Mrs. Adolphe Openhym, who is also the first Presi- 


A District Nurse 437 


dent of the Association, to provide a district nurse for 
poor people of the district without regard to race or 
creed. Like the two preceding institutions it is on a 
neighborhood basis and managed by a committee of 
ladies. It has the same relation to St. Michael’s 
Church as the preceding organizations, namely that 
it has been welcomed by that church and supported 
by it and by its rector to the extent of their ability, 
and that the Parish House has been placed at its 
disposal and free headquarters provided there in 
connection with the Clinic. 


CHAPTER XVI 


ST. MICHAEL’S CEMETERY 


OST of the old churches of New York had ceme- 

M teries connected with them, and not a few of the 
public squares of the New York City of to-day 

are the churchyards and burial grounds of the old New 
Yorkers of the past, not to speak of those which, like 
Washington Square and Bryant Square, were at different 
periods, Potter’s Fields. When St. Michael’s Church 
was started there were apparently two churchyards 
in Harlem, the Dutch Reformed and the Friends’, and 
one cemetery of some description at Fort Washington. 
Besides these graveyards people buried their dead 
also in private cemeteries on their own grounds. A 
relic of this use is the grave of “The Amiable Child,” 
near Grant’s Tomb on Riverside Drive; and as late 
as 1866 there were other similar graves to be found at 
various points in the upper part of the island. For 
the accommodation of its parishioners St. Michael’s 
provided, at the outset, a cemetery in connection with 
the church in the churchyard surrounding the first 
building. The first record of a burial there is the 
following: “On Friday morning June 22nd, 1809, at 
St. Michael’s Bloomingdale buried Joseph Armstrong 
Aged 2 years & 17 days the son of the Sexton of the 


Church—Scarf and Gloves.’’ Mr. Bartow records 
438 


Vaults in St. Michael’s 439 


the receipt of the customary scarf and gloves, given 
in connection with funerals, which the minister was 
expected to wear in the church service of the 
following Sunday. The remains of Joseph Arm- 
strong lie beneath the present church and his grave- 
stone is in the Crypt. 

From the Vestry records it appears that in 1810 
permission was given to Jacob Schieffelin to erect 
a vault in the churchyard, of which permission he 
does not seem to have taken advantage. Later, 
when he deeded to St. Mary’s, Manhattanville, the 
land for a church, he reserved the right to erect 
a vault, and did in fact erect in front of that churcha 
vault which was used by the Schieffelin family for many 
years. In the same year, 1810, the Vestry voted a 
general permission to erect vaults in St. Michael’s 
Churchyard, 8x10 feet, on payment of twenty-five 
dollars. In 1814 there was some difficulty with the 
city in regard to the burial ground, and a committee 
consisting of Valentine Nutter and Oliver H. Hicks 
was appointed “to communicate with the corporation 
of the Cityrelative to the burying-ground attached to the 
Church of St. Michael and obtain such relief as to them 
shall appear proper.” What the difficulty was, does not 
appear from the records, but from the report of the 
committee it does appear that, whatever it was, the city 
had no power to give redress. The first notice of the 
cost of a burial in St. Michael’s occurs in the Vestry 
minutes of August 16, 1827, when it is directed that 
$5.00 shall be charged for the burial of each person 
over 14 and $3.00 for each person under 14 years At 
about this time also, it became necessary to make some 
provision for the burial of the poor connected with 
the church. The church had purchased from Alderman 


440 Annals of St. Michael’s 


John R. Peters a little over an acre of ground at Clen- 
dining Lane and 103d Street, which was no longer re- 
quired for school purposes, the school having been 
handed over to the Public School Society. Accord- 
ingly, on July 12, 1828, the Vestry voted to appropriate 
the school-house lot for a cemetery. 

From a report of a committee appointed to consider 
the expediency of selling a part of the old school-house 
property in 1864, we extract the following account of 
the use of this property for burial purposes: 


Upon consulting the Book of Minutes of the proceedings 
of the Vestry of St. Michael’s Church it appears that in the 
year 1825 the property in Clendinings lane now held by 
this Corporation, was purchased at a cost of $237—for the 
accommodation of the Parish School. In the year 1826, 
the Trustees of the Public School having agreed to provide 
for the education of the children, the Parish School was 
given over to their care. 

At a Vestry meeting held on the 7th of April, 1825, a 
Committee was appointed to consider the expediency of 
purchasing additional ground for the burial of the dead. 
This Committee reporting progress & continued for two 
years was finally discharged Aug. 26, 1827. 

On the 5th day of December 1827, at a special meeting 
of the Vestry Messrs. Thorne, Weyman & Jas. F. De 
Peyster were appointed a Committee to purchase a piece 
of ground opposite to St. Michael’s Church. On the 2nd 
day of July 1828 this Committee reported that they had 
been unable to procure the ground designated and asked to 
be discharged, which request was granted. At the same 
meeting the three gentlemen above named were re-ap- 
pointed a Committee to make such disposition of the 
School House lot “‘as they should deem most advantageous 
and report thereon at the next call of the Vestry and also 
whether a suitable lot can be purchased for a Burial 
ground.”’ At a Vestry Meeting held ten days later the 


Burying Ground for Poor 44au 


Committee reported that, finding their endeavors fruitless 
in obtaining a suitable piece of ground, they had agreed 
in recommending the following resolution: ‘Resolved 
That the School House lot ‘be appropriated as a Cemetery, 
be surrounded with a stone wall & forthwith put in due 
order.” ”’ 

This resolution was adopted by the Vestry. 

The School House Lot thus became the Cemetery of 
this Church & continued to be so used, as appears from 
the Parish Register, down to the year 1854. 

In the year 1852, by a city ordinance all burying on the 
Island below 86th Street, excepting in family vaults was 
prohibited. An attempt was made at about the same time 
to pass a law closing all burying grounds on the Island, 
Trinity Cemetery excepted. The attention of some mem- 
bers of the Vestry being thus directed to their burying 
ground it was deemed by them undesirable to continue 
using it as a place of interment. Accordingly since the 
year 1852 there have been but four bodies buried in the 
School House lot & since the year 1854 it has ceased entirely 
to be used for burial purposes. 


But to return to the churchyard. It was evidently 
the intention, when the school-house lot was appro- 
priated as a burial ground for the poor, that the 
churchyard should be reserved for the members of the 
congregation proper. Accordingly, on April 14, 1830, it 
is voted that none but pewholders or members of their 
families shall be interred in the churchyard. By this 
time the old churchyards in the city were being filled 
up, many were closed as churchyards, and in those 
which remained the land was held at high prices. The 
great cemeteries of our day were all of them yet in the 
future. The first of these, Greenwood, was not founded 
until 1838. The first separate cemetery on Manhattan 
Island, Trinity Cemetery, was founded four years later, 


442 Annals of St. Michael’s 


in 1842, on what was then Bloomingdale Road and 
155th Street, at the extreme northern limit of the 
projected city. Five years later, in 1847, a general 
cemetery law was passed. It was apparently partly the 
increasing lack and expense of land in the city church- 
yards which brought about at this period a demand for 
vaults in St. Michael’s Churchyard. Some of the old 
families had doubtless also come to count this as their 
home church, preferring at least to be buried in the 
rural quiet and beauty of the charming little church- 
yard in Bloomingdale, rather than in a city cemetery. 
So it came about that between 1830 and 1834 there 
was a considerable demand for vaults in St. Michael’s 
Churchyard. To this period belong the Weyman, Wag- 
staff, Waldo, DePeyster, Delafield, Hazzard, Chisolm, 
and Windust vaults. By this time also land, even 
in quiet little St. Michael’s Churchyard, was becoming 
valuable, and for permission to build these vaults 
$150 was paid, not $25 as at an earlier date. Thirty 
years later, in 1865, this land had become so valuable 
to the church, which needed room for enlargement, 
erection of Sunday School building, etc., that the 
Vestry offered to buy in all vaults at the rate of $300 
each, to which offer there seems, however, to have 
been no response. 

In 1870 the opening of Amsterdam Avenue disturbed 
portions both of the Churchyard around the Church 
and also of the burying ground on Clendining Lane, 
and the following resolution was adopted by the Vestry: 


Resolved, that the Treasurer be authorized to pay the 
amount of expense incurred in removing the remains of 
bodies interred in the graveyard adjoining the Church, and 
which may be disturbed by the work of grading the Tenth 
Avenue by the City authorities. The remains so disturbed 


ee 


Removal of Remains as 


to be deposited in the Church Cemetery at Newtown. 
The Clerk of the Vestry was directed to insert in one or 
more public newspapers notice of such removal and of 
names of deceased whose remains may be thus exposed. 


In accordance with this resolution the clerk of the 
Vestry inserted the following advertisement in the 
New York Herald: 


_ Saint Michael’s Church, Corner Bloomingdale Road & 
goth St., N. Y. City. D.T. Brown, Clerk. 

In removing the bodies buried in that portion of the Old 
Churchyard disturbed by the laying of the Croton-water- 
pipes, the remains have been identified and not yet claimed, 
of Paul Lee, Surgeon in the British Army, died 1822, 
aged 63 years. Isabella Lee, died 1822, aged 63. John 
Cinnamon, died 1827, aged 33. Ann W. C. Froup, died 
1828, aged 48. Rich’d S. Ritchie died 1836, aged 24 yrs. 

These remains will be deposited for four months in the 
receiving vault of St. Michael’s Cemetery near Astoria, 
L. L., to await the instructions of friends of the deceased. 
By Order of the Vestry. 


While the Clendining Lane burying ground ceased 
to be used for burials in 1854, St. Michael’s Churchyard 
continued to be so used for almost twenty years longer. 
The last interment of which I find record is that of 
Abraham Valentine Williams, son of Dr. A. V. Williams, 
a former warden of the church, in 1873. At the erec- 
tion of the new church, in 1891, the old churchyard 
was built into the church. Some of the old graves 
and vaults were opened at that time by their owners 
and the remains therein interred removed to other 
cemeteries,! but the greater part were left undisturbed, 
and the old graveyard lies to-day beneath the chancel 


1The Cemetery Committee reported the “‘removal of bodies from 
graveyard and from DePeyster vault to the number of about roo.” 


444 Annals of St. Michael’s 


and the southern half of the nave of the church. St. 
Michael’s Church is, we believe, the only church in 
this city, perhaps in this country, in which the graves 
of the dead of former generations lie beneath the feet 
of the worshippers of to-day. The tombstones of these 
graves were reverently removed and placed in the 
crypt beneath the Chapel of the Angels on the line of 
old Bloomingdale Road. This crypt serves also as a 
mortuary chapel, where the remains of the dead of the 
present congregation may be deposited between death 
and burial. 

In examining the stones of earlier date in this crypt 
one is impressed by the relatively large proportion of 
persons born in England, Ireland, and Scotland, a 
reminder of the fact that the church of those days still 
stood very close to the colonial period. Among the 
more interesting of these tombstones is that of Thomas 
M. Finlay, A.M., born in Armagh, Ireland, in 1756, 
a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and one time 
Professor of Greek and Latin in the college of his 
native town. Emigrating to this country he taught 
school with much success first in Newark, and then 
at Manhattanville. In his school-house at the latter 
place St. Mary’s Church was founded. A grateful 
pupil furnished a Latin epitaph for his tombstone, and 
his widow kept the grass fresh and the flowers blooming 
there until 1872, when she herself died at the age of ror. 

The gravestone of a lad of sixteen, now in the crypt, 
used to be shown to the children of St. Michael’s of 
earlier generations as a warning against Sabbath break- 
ing. This lad, Hiram Black, did not, like Hogarth’s ap- 
prentice, play dice on the tombstones while his honest 
comrades worshipped in the church. But he did, it 
appears, take advantage of the fact that all decent 


i, 


4 


Old Tombstones 445 


and godly folk were in church, to climb a neighbor’s 
cherry tree and gorge himself with cherries. I suppose 
that in the haste of eating stolen fruit, keeping an eye 
out at the same time against the return of the church 
goers, the poor lad swallowed unwittingly and unwil- 
lingly a few cherry stones, which found their way into 
that needless and then unknown organ, the appendix 
vermiformis. At all events he died as a result of 
eating stolen cherries on the Sabbath, and many a 
parent used to take his children to that gravestone 
and tell the story of Hiram Black that his sad fate 
might prove their warning. 

One epitaph on the tombstone of Obed Thayer, who 
died in 1816, is worth quoting as a specimen of the 
obituary taste of that period: 


My tender wife I leave to mourn and weep, 
While I within the silent tomb do sleep; 
Prepare for death in time, for you must die, 
And also be entom’d as well as I. 


How lonely is his widow’s fate, 

Since she has lost her tender mate; 

Thy virtues, Thayer, although they’re nameless here, 
Shall long be told by Elizabeth’s silent tear. 


The churchyard about the church providing only 
for the members of the church itself, it became neces- 
sary after the disuse of the Clendining Lane burying 
ground to provide some other place for the burial of 
the poor of the parish and neighborhood. 

In 1847, Rev. T. M. Peters, assistant at St. Michael’s 
Church, commenced his mission in what is now Central 
Park, 


then a wilderness of rock and swamp from the larger portion 


446 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of which the trees and brush, which once in part con- 
cealed its barrenness, had been cleared away by the poor 
settlers for use as firewood. From East to West three 
roads crossed this tract and from these roads winding 
footways and narrow cart paths led to the habitations of 
poor and wretched people of every race and color and 
nationality, who had there taken refuge. In this waste 
there was but a single village, known as Seneca, occupied 
by many families of colored people with whom consorted 
and in many cases amalgamated, debased and outcast 
whites. Many of the inhabitants of this village had no 
regular occupation, finding it easy to replenish their stock 
of fuel with driftwood from the river and supply their tables 
from the same source, with fish. Poverty abounds in chil- 
dren and the colored village of which we speak formed no 
exception to the prevailing rule. . . . With no ref- 
erence to the future or other thought beyond that of pro- 
viding for the spiritual destitution, an unfinished room 
in the centre of the settlement was hired and rudely 
furnished with plank seats. The small room was soon 
crowded with forty colored children, the number being 
limited by the narrowness of the apartment. As a neces- 
sary accompaniment of the work there begun, the families 
were visited, advised, and, when necessary, assisted. Like 
all thriftless mortals, in the day of health they had only 
enough. Sickness almost invariably brought great desti- 
tution. Death, with its many attendant expenses, obliged 
these poor people either to give up the bodies of their near- 
est and dearest relations for burial in “‘Potter’s Field,”’ or 
incur a debt which only months of saving could extinguish. 
The greatest pressure of distress was felt, therefore, in cases 
of death, and the charity most needed there was some effort 
to reduce or meet the high charges for funerals and burials. 
After the lapse of two years, an unexpected gift of a piece 
of ground was made to this Mission by four sisters, of 
whom, up to that time, the Missionary had never heard; 
a convenient building for the Sunday school and public 


Churchyard in Central Park 447 


worship was soon erected, and the remainder of the ground 
allotted to the burial of the poor dead. 

Immediately thereafter followed the cholera of 1849, 
and many a body received a Christian burial owing to 
this unlooked for gift of ground. The great relief which 
the opportunity of free burial afforded to these poor people 
had been scarcely realized, when an act was passed at 
Albany closing this and other burial places in New York 
City lying below Eighty-sixth Street.! 


How Dr. Peters provided a burial place not only for 
these poor people but for all the poor people of the 
city is recorded in a paper which he prepared in 1874 
at the request of the City Mission Society for Church 
and State, from which we quote the following: 


In the early part of the year 1852, interments having 
been prohibited by the legislature in the ground used for 
three years previous, I desired to procure, in Astoria, a 
small piece of land,as a place of burial for the poor ministered 
to in connection with All Angels’ Church, built by me a few 
years earlier, in what is now the Central Park. The kindly 
proffered services of a friend? accustomed to seek exercise 
and recreation on horseback, were accepted for the purpose 
of looking up such a lot. After a long search he reported 
failure to find anything desirable at the price named, 
which was from two to four hundred dollars, but that a 
field containing seven acres, lying within two miles of the 
Astoria Ferry, was offered for sale at twenty-one hundred 
dollars, eleven hundred in cash, the remainder to rest as a 
mortgage on the property. The sum required to be paid 
down exceeded all my worldly possessions, and the project 
then suggested itself of interesting other parties in secur- 
ing the land as a place of burial for all the Free Churches 
in our communion in the City of New York. An attempt 


1Gradual Growth of Charities. 
2Thomas A. Richmond, then a vestryman of St. Michael’s. 


448 Annals of St. Michael’s 


was accordingly made to obtain money by subscription. 
Little interest was manifested in the enterprise. Beyond a 
donation of twenty-five dollars from the late Robert B. 
Minturn, alike sum from the late James Punnett, and fifty 
cents given by a colored woman named Venus Costello, 
nothing could be collected. Hence this method was 
necessarily abandoned. The money donation was after- 
wards applied towards paying for St. Luke’s Hospital lot. 
Recourse was next had immediately to the persons to be 
benefited, and the sum of eighty-one dollars was con- 
tributed by forty-one persons, who received certificates 
to be used in payment of graves and small family lots. 
Thirty-seven of these subscribers were colored; four were 
white people living in the immediate vicinity of the upper 
reservoir. The names of the forty-one are written in a book, 
as are indeed the names of every person aiding in the pur- 
chase either by gift orloan. Dr. Muhlenberg for the Church 
of the Holy Communion, and Dr. Bedell, now Bishop 
of Ohio, for Ascension Church, contributed each one hun- 
dred and ten dollars, receiving the promise of a burial plot 
for each of their respective Churches when the transaction 
should be completed. The whole amount thus far accumu- 
lated, was but three hundred and fifty-one dollars and fifty 
cents, and further progress towards raising the necessary 
funds seemed well nigh hopeless. As a last resort my 
plans were laid before a few friends, and loans, to me 
personally, asked for the object. There were thus 
secured two loans of three hundred dollars each, one of one 
hundred and sixty, one of one hundred and fifty, one of 
one hundred and twenty-three, and one of one hundred 
and sixteen dollars, all of which were in due time paid. 
The amount in hand had been thus increased to fifteen 
hundred dollars, the property was bought, in my nme, 
the payment of eleven hundred dollars made, and a fence 
with covered gateway erected upon the road in front. The 
expense of mapping and laying out the ground and building 
a temporary lodge for the keeper had next tobe met. This 


a 


- 


Begging and Borrowing 449 


was done with funds solicited upon condition of assigning 
a plot of about eighty-six hundred feet to St. Luke’s Hos- 
pital for the burial of deceased patients. The sum of two 
hundred and eighty-four dollars and twenty-three cents 
was thus gathered, to which I added two hundred and sixty- 
five dollars and twenty-five cents; all the money, if my 
memory serves me aright, of which I was then possessed. 
With this five hundred forty-nine and one-half dollars 
the work of putting the ground in proper order was prose- 
cuted until the purse was again emptied. The receipts for 
burials began to yield enough for current expenses and to 
leave a surplus, which was applied to the erection of an 
enclosing fence and to other improvements. Deeming it 
unsafe that land set apart for a cemetery should stand 
in the name of an individual, and also that it was undesir- 
able to have a mortgage on graves; I proposed to the Vestry 
of St. Michael’s Church, of which I was Assistant Minister, 
as well as Rector of All Angels’ Church, to receive a con- 
veyance of the land and to advance the remaining one 
thousand dollars. This was done, with the proviso that 
the interest, and the expectation that the principal of the 
money thus applied, should be repaid out of the income 
of the ground; to which alone I was to look, during the 
ensuing ten years, for reimbursement of any expenditures 
made upon it by me. 

Although it was early demonstrated that the receipts 
of the ground would suffice for current expenses and inter- 
est, there was yet much to be done in the way of improve- 
ment, for which other funds must be obtained. It was 
my wish to complete the first intention of making this a neat 
and proper burial place, in a portion of which free graves 
might always be given to the poor of our Free Churches 
and inmates of public and private institutions. So soon, 
therefore, as I became a holder of any private property, 
whatever amount seemed necessary for the betterment 
of the cemetery was so applied. To secure beyond question 
the free burial place desired, I gave in 1855 the sum of five 


450 Annals of St. Michael’s 


known as “‘C,”’ should be forever appropriated to the burial 


hundred and say dollars, stipulating that a certain a 


of members of Free Churches and the inmates of charitable — 
institutions, the only charge to be that of digging the grave. — 


Twelve hundred and ninety-four free interments, chiefly — 
for the City Mission Society, have been made in the piece 
of ground thus set aside. 

From that date, 1855, I had no hesitation in expending 
upon the Cemetery whatever was requisite to adorn it with 
trees, supply proper fences, erect a lodge, and otherwise 
improve it. By the purchase of an adjoining field the size 
of the Churchyard was nearly doubled, and when in 1865 


St. Michael’s Vestry assumed and gave its bond for the ~ 


whole indebtedness, the amount advanced by me above 


v 


elie. <p Ong, 


eis er B 


all gifts and receipts had reached, with interest, to within — 


a trifle of eight thousand dollars. Since that time the 
Vestry has paid, out of the return of the ground, the amount 
for which it thus became responsible, as well as the larger 
portion of about five thousand dollars, expended by it upon 
the lodge, iron fences, gateway, and roads. Besides the 
financial difficulties, legal impediments and sanitary regu- 
lations were from time to time thrown in our way, every one 
of which, without the aid of other parties, was triumphantly 
overcome and final success achieved. The part of the 
Churchyard yet unused will suffice for the wants of the 
Church for long years to come, and allow free burial to 
many hundreds of those in whose interest this cemetery 
was first purchased. Besides the free interments already 
enumerated, nine hundred and eighty-four free graves 
have been given by St. Luke’s Hospital, the Churches of 
the Holy Communion, the Holy Apostles, Trinity, and 
other churches, and also by The Sheltering Arms and 
various charitable or other incorporations, making a total 
of twenty-two hundred and five bodies which have been 
buried at a very moderate cost, easily borne y their 
friends in humble life. 

When it is considered that each deceased person leaves 


Transferred to St. Michael’s 451 


a home bereaved, and that each member of that household, 
however poor, desires to give the dead an orderly burial, it 
will at once be seen that forty-six hundred such burials 
means five times forty-six hundred moprners in some degree 
comforted. There are persons who esteem the burial of the 
dead an unnecessary charity, inasmuch as the Potter’s 
Field is open to all. Let such go with our visitors to the 
homes of the poor, to the bedside of the sick in the hospitals, 
and they will learn that next to the dread of the pains 
of hell is horror at the thought that the church might have 
no grave for them. The death bed is made less painful, 
when they are assured that our ministrations will not 
cease, until they have received at our hands the last gift of 
earth. Plentiful tears and expressions of gratitude, from 
daughters and sons, from fathers, and above all from 
mothers, who in the day of bereavement and poverty 
know not whither to go or look, almost daily witness to 
the grateful and opportune relief which this cemetery 
affords. Unlike almost all other institutions, it has no 
competitor or imitator. Our church, I believe, stands alone 
among all Christian bodies in this city in having a ground 
in which the pastors of her thirty free congregations, or the 
missionaries to hospital and asylum can receive, without 
purchase, a resting place for their dead. 


Reference is made in this account to a transaction 
with Dr. Peters by which the Cemetery in Astoria was 
transferred to St. Michael’s Church. The transaction 
is recorded in the following documents and resolutions in 
the Register of St. Michael’s Church: 


To the Vestry of St. Michael’s Church. 
GENTLEMEN: 

Having purchased 7 acres of land at Astoria on the 
Flushing Turnpike after consultation with a majority of 
the members of the Vestry for a Cemetery to be called St. 
Michael’s Churchyard for the sum of $2100, and being 


452 Annals of St. Michael’s 


desirous of conveying the same to the Vestry, clear of a — 
mortgage of $1000, remaining due thereon, I have con- 
sidered that it would be advantageous to have the mort- 
gage paid off & cancelled, and purpose that the Vestry — 
should pay the mortgage, and for security receive a Deed 
for the Church at Yorkville called the Church of All Angels 
& four lots of land adjoining, now indebted to me $1000, _ 
which Church will be conveyed clear and unincumbered. 
It is however to be understood that I am to be reim- 
bursed the sum of $2100 thus advanced by me for the pur- , 
chase of the Cemetery, out of the sales of Burial Plots — 
in the same, and also such sums as I may pay for the charge ~ 
and improvement of the ground and the erection of a 
Chapel thereon, if the same shall be deemed advisable. 
Respectfully, 


(Signed) THomas McC, PETERs. 
New. York, March 14, 1853. 


Report To the Vestry of St. Michael's Church. 


The Committee to whom was referred the annexed letter 
from the Rev. T. McC. Peters Respectfully Report That 
they have examined into the subject matter of the said let- 
ter, and submit the following views thereon: 

Mr. Peters after verbal consultation and advice of a num- 
ber of the Vestry, during the absence of the Rector, pur- 
chased for $2100 a lot of 7 acres of land at Newtown near 
Astoria, for a Cemetery to be called “‘St. Michael’s Church- 
yard,” paying $1100 in cash, and giving a mortgage of 
$1000, the balance of the consideration. 

Some years ago he erected a Church at Yorkville near 
8th Avenue called the Church of All Angels, by means of 
contributions collected by him, and funds advanced by 
himself upon four lots, the title of which is under his control; 
which Church he considers now indebted to him at least 
$1000. 

Both of these properties have greatly increased in value, 
since the title vested in Mr. Peters, but he is not desirous 


Debt on Cemetery 453 


of realizing any profit, as he considers himself acting as a 
Trustee in both cases for the best interests of the Church. 

Mr. Peters proposes now, that the Vestry of St. Michael’s 
Church shall pay off and cancel the morigage of $1000 on 
the Cemetery at New Town on receiving a deed from him 
forthe same. Reserving the right to manage the same for 
Io years, or until he can reimburse himself within that 
time, the whole sum of $2100 advanced, out of the sales 
of burial plots, and also such sums as he may pay for the 
improvement thereof. 

Mr. Peters also proposes to pay to the Treasurer of St. 
Michael’s Church semi-annually, the yearly sum of $70 out 
of the monies received for sales of Burial Plots, being his 
interest on the said $1000 advanced, until said Church 
shall be reimbursed the said sum from the sale of the York- 
ville property, or from the sale of Burial Plots in the 
Cemetery. 

He also proposes to have conveyed by deed to the Vestry of 
St. Michael’s the Church of All Angels, and the said 4 
lots at Yorkville to secure the said sum of $1000 clear and 
unencumbered. 

The ultimate result of these arrangements as we Report, 
will be that the Vestry of St. Michael’s Church will own a 
Cemetery of 7 acres of land at New Town, and also 4 lots of 
land at Yorkville, with the Church of All Angels erected 
thereon, upon advancing only the sum of $1000, as Mr. 
Peters looks to the sale of Burial Plots alone to reimburse 
him or his heirs, the $2100 advanced by him, & the monies 
paid out by him in regulating & managing the Cemetery, 
he retaining the management for 10 years, unless sooner 
paid. 

Your Committee therefore submits the following Resolu- 
tion for adoption by the Vestry viz.: 

Resolved That the Treasurer be authorized & directed 
to pay the sum of $1000 due on mortgage on “St. Michael’s 
Churchyard” at Newtown & cancel the same, upon receiv- 
ing from Mr. Peters a conveyance for the same, reserving 


454 Annals of St. Michael’s 


to himself the right of managing the same until such time, 
not exceeding 10 years from the date thereof, as he shall be 


reimbursed the monies expended by him, for the purchase — 


and improvement of said premises, with the interest thereof, 
& Mr. Peters agreeing to pay St. Michael’s Church $70 a 


year, semi-annually, while his right of managing said 


Cemetery continues. Mr. Peters next by himself or his 


heirs to receive the sum of $2100, and also such sums — 


as he may expend for the charge & improvement of said 
ground, out of the proceeds of the sales of burial plots 
therein. 


Said Treasurer also to receive a Conveyance of the Church ~ 


of All Angels and four lots at Yorkville as above, clear & 
unencumbered. 
April 3oth, 1853. 
R. L. ScHIEFFELIN, 


(Signed.) A. V. WILLiAms Committee. 
jas. F. DEPEYSTER. 


By 1864 the indebtedness of the Cemetery to Dr. 


Peters had increased to $8000, as is shown by the 
report of the Committee on the sale of the Clendining 
Lane land. The cost of surveying and mapping out 
lands, opening roads, erecting gateways and keeper’s 
lodge, building 2500 feet of high picket fence, planting 
out many trees and shrubs and other improvements 
and the purchase of six more acres of land, increasing 
the original seven acres to thirteen acres, had caused 
this additional indebtedness. It was the opinion of 
the committee that $6300 might be paid by the sale of 
a portion of the school-house lot and it was their ex- 
pectation that in time the receipts from the Cemetery 
would discharge the entire debt “and also add to the 
present income of the Vestry, a sum sufficient to pay 
the annual interest upon the funded debt of theChurch.”’ 
In point of fact the Clendining Lane land was not sold 


I ee 


Receipts of Cemetery 455 


for this purpose at that time. In 1870, however, the 
church sold to the village of Astoria for $3600 two 
acres of its land for a village cemetery. 

There is no report of the actual administration, 
interments, receipts, etc., of the Cemetery entered on 
the Vestry minutes until 1866. In that year the re- 
ceipts were $707.25 and the expenses were $411.81, 
leaving a balance of $305.44, out of which $176.80 were 
expended in the erection of a receiving vault, so that 
only $128.64 were actually paid to the Treasury. The 
total number of interments in that year was 283, but the 
report states that “the receipts of the Cemetery have 
been much diminished by the stoppage of the Astoria 
boats for five months out of twelve.’”’ From that time 
on the rector presents a report of the Cemetery to the 
Vestry each year. Evidently the latter is concerned in 
the financial side of those reports, for in 1867 it ‘was 
resolved that free burials in the Church Cemetery at 
Newtown, Long Island, be discontinued after the end 
of the present year except from St. Michael’s Parish.”’ 

When the Cemetery in Astoria was started Dr. 
Peters placed in charge of it Christian Scheurer, one 
of the German refugees of 1848, to whom he had before 
that given a home in Manhattanville, to cultivate the 
land held by him for St. Mary’s Church, and Christian 
Scheurer, his widow, and his son Edward after him, 
continued in charge of the Cemetery until 1895. Up 
to about 1875 the rector seems to have had no assis- 
tance from the Vestry as a body in the administration 
of the Cemetery, although Dr. Brown personally gave 
him much help. After Mr. W. R. Peters became 
treasurer of the church and Mr. E. L. Tiemann! clerk 


1 After he left the Vestry in 1895, and up to the time of his death, 
May ro, 1896, Mr. Tiemann continued to serve on the Cemetery 


456 Annals of St. Michael’s 


of the Vestry, however, they, with the rector of the 
parish, were appointed a Committee on the Cemetery, 
and from that time onward occur notices (1883, ’86, 
"88, ’89) of enlargements and improvements of the 
Cemetery, laying out of roads, grading of ground, 
adoption of new methods of cemetery administration, 
the erection of a new lodge or rather rebuilding of 
an old farmhouse to serve as a lodge, etc. The 
following minute from the records of the Vestry 
meeting of February 6, 1885, gives some idea of the 
development of the Cemetery up to that date and the 
method which it was proposed to pursue in the future: 


Mr. W. R. Peters stated that the object of the meeting 
was to consider a proposition to extend the Cemetery by the 
acquisition of more ground, and gave a short history of the 
Cemetery from the time it was started by Dr. Peters in 
1852, when a few acres were purchased by him at his own 
risk, with the particular object of providing a burial ground 
for poor people at small expense, and which should be 
wholly under control of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
It was carried along by him until 1865, up to which time the 
amount expended in excess of receipts was about $8000. 
A bond for this amount was executed by the Vestry of this 
Church, who thereby acquired the title and control of the 
property. 

The indebtedness had all been covered by 1875, and from 

that date until 1883 there had been paid into the Church 
Treasury the net sum of about $21700. 
Committee, and to his zeal and diligence the church is largely 
indebted for the development and improvement of that property. 
Of his work the Committee says in its report to the Vestry, Octo- 
ber 12, 1896: 

“By his sudden taking away we have lost a valuable friend and 
co-worker, and the Cemetery has been deprived of the guiding hand 
which almost unaided has directed it for the past ten or fifteen 
years.” 


a a; 


Increase of Cemetery 457 


The old ground having been nearly all sold, a purchase of 
about 13 acres adjoining was made in 1883, and an act 
of the Legislature secured permitting the increase of the 
Cemetery to the extent of 50 acres in addition to the orig- 
inal 13 acres (about). 

The favorable position of the ground, situated within 
only 1% miles of the upper part of the city, and the almost 
certain prospect of securing, for the benefit of the church, 
a steady and increasing income, suggested the desirability 
and importance of acquiring as much of the surrounding 
property as possible, provided advantageous terms could be 
arranged with the owners and the necessary permission be 
obtained from the Board of Supervisors or other competent 
authority. On investigation it appeared that the cemetery 
was bounded on the west by the Bowery Bay Road, 
the boundary line between Newtown and Astoria; on the 
Southwest by lands of the Hanson Estate, which could not 
be sold until all the heirs were of age; on the Southeast, East 
and Northeast by the lands of Wm. Steinway: and North 
by lands of Drs. Peters and Brown. 

Negotiations were opened with Mr. Steinway on the basis 
by which Woodlawn Cemetery had been formed, viz., the 
owners of property contributing their lands to be paid 
50% of the proceeds when sold. The final result of the 
conference with Mr. Steinway, as set forth in the proposition 
which will now be laid before the Vestry for their action, will 
be found to be nearly 20% more favorable than the above. 


In order to acquire Mr. Steinway’s land, as here 
proposed, it was supposed to be necessary to secure an 
act of the Legislature authorizing an increase in the 
size of the Cemetery. A bill for this purpose was intro- 
duced at Albany, but held up by those in power, who 
intimated that, inasmuch as there was profit in such a 
transaction, they must have their share and that the 
bill could be passed only on payment of $5000. Being 


458 Annals of St. Michael’s 


a Church corporation St. Michael’s could scarcely en- 
gage in the corruption of the Legislature, and the bill 
was accordingly allowed to drop. Fortunately, how- 
ever, the legal members of the Vestry and its legal 
advisors discovered a provision of the general cemetery 
law, theretofore overlooked, which rendered such an 
act of Legislature unnecessary, as under that law it 
was already quite competent to increase the acreage 
of the Cemetery. Finally, however, instead of the 
system proposed by Mr. Peters in 1885, the Committee 
adopted the plan of buying land outright, agreeing to 
pay for it out of the receipts on a co-operative basis. 
Under this plan the acreage has now been increased to 
74 acres, held by the church entirely free from debt, 
of which about 50 acres is still unsold and available 
for burial purposes, the yearly absorption at the present 
time being about one half an acre. 

The growth of the Cemetery has been steady and 
during part of the period rapid. In 1866 Dr. Peters 
reported 283 interments. In 1880 there were 493 
interments; in 1890, 1426; in 1900, 1640; in 1906-07, 
1789. While in the latter years the number of inter- 
ments has not increased so rapidly as in the decade 
1880-90, on the other hand the sale of lots in the latter 
period has been proportionately larger. St. Michael’s 
is becoming more of a family cemetery. 

Among the churches and institutions having plots 
in St. Michael’s Cemetery at the present time are the 
Home for the Aged Men and Aged Couples, Italian 
P. E. Mission in Bleecker Street, Trinity Church, St. 
Luke’s Hospital, Transfiguration Church, St. Michael’s 
Church, St. Mary’s Church, St. Timothy’s Church, St. 
Ann’s Church, St. Mary the Virgin’s Church, Holy 
Apostle’s Church, Holy Communion Church, Ascension 


A Valuable Asset 459 


Church, St. Clement’s Church, St. John Baptist Mission 
House, Sheltering Arms, St. Andrew’s Church, All 
Saints’ Church, House of Rest, and City Mission Society. 

The original object of the Cemetery, to provide graves 
for the poor, especially the poor of the Church, has 
thus been attained, and at the same time the Cemetery 
has become financially a valuable asset of the Church. 


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APPENDIX A 


LIST OF ORIGINAL PEWHOLDERS, 1807, together with the 
number of the pew and the price paid for a three-year lease of the 
same. 


Tm, (O); 1815 15500 ae $30.00 27 & 28 Isaac Jones.... $13.00 
2. Dr. Hammersley... 8.00 29. Garrit Van Horne.. 11.00 
3- Mrs. Hamilton..... 11.00 30. Nathaniel Prime... 18.00 
Aaedeeicem ble): ... 11.00 6. 3. Michael Hogan..... 18.00 
Pelee Kem ble). 2)... 10.00 32. Wm. Rodgers...... 20.00 
6. Wm. Rhinelander.. 11.00 33. John McVickar..... 18.00 
7. Edward Dunscomb. 10.00 34. John McVickar..... 14.00 
8. Valentine Nutter... 11.00 42. John Le Conte..... 8.00 
9. Michael Hogan..... 10.00 6. 43..:~ William A. Davis... 12.00 
io. Thomas Morgan.... 13.00 44. M. L. Davis....... 12.00 
11. Jacob Schieffelin... «11.00 45. William Rodgers... 19.00 
te) jacob) Mark........ 11.00 646. William Rodgers... 23.00 
20. Thomas Cadle..... 10.00 47. Peter Schermerhorn 25.00 
21. Thomas Cadle...... 12.00 48. William Jauncey... 23.00 
22. Dr. S. Borrowe..... 14.00 49. Frederick DePeyster 22.00 
23. Thomas Slidell..... 14.00 50. Joshua Jones...... 23.00 
24. D. M. Clarkson..... 10.00 51. Frederick DePeyster 20.00 
25. J.C. Vandenheuvel. 13.00 52. Frederick DePeyster 16.00 
26, )- ochieftelin...... . 12.00 53. John Jackson...... 30.00 
APPENDIX B 


LIST OF WARDENS OF ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH 


Robert T. Kemble, 1807-1810. Oliver H. Hicks, 1813-1815. 
William Rodgers, 1807-1808, James F. DePeyster, 1830-1874. 


1815-1818. James G. Russell, 1832-1838, 
Valentine Nutter, 1808-1832. 1839-1841. 
William A. Davis, 1810-1813, Jacob Lorillard, 1838. 
1818-1830. A. V. Williams, 1841-1862. 


463 


464 


H. W. T. Mali, 1862-1867. 
James Punnett, 1867-1871. 
David S. Jackson, 1871-1872. 
David T. Brown, 1872-1878. 


Annals of St. Michael’s 


Wm. R. Peters, 1878-. 

James F. Chamberlain, 
1894. 

Charles E. Tripler, 1894-1900. 


1885- 


Greenleaf K. Sheridan, 1875- John A. Beall, 1900-1904. 
1885. E. J. Ware, 1904.. 
APPENDIX C 


VESTRYMEN OF ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH 


Valentine Nutter, 1807-1808. 
Edward Dunscomb, 1807-1811. 
Michael Hogan, 1807-1810. 
William A. Davis, 1807-1810. 
Oliver H. Hicks, 1807-1813. 
Jacob Schieffelin, 1807-1811. 
Thomas Cadle, 1807-1811. 
Isaac Jones, 1807-1822. 
William Rhinelander, 1808-1812, 
1813-1823. 
Dr. William Hammersley, 1810- 
1812. 
William Weyman, 1810-1833. 
James Whitehouse, 1811-1814. 
Andrew McVickar, 1811-1813. 
Henry Fisher, 1811-1813. 
G. W. Prevost, 1812-1813. 
Guy Carleton Bayley, 
1815, 1831-1834. 
Wm. Rodgers, 1813-1815. 
Leslie Stewart, 1813-1815. 
John Jackson, 1813-1814. 
Nathaniel Prime, 1814-1815. 
Henry McFarlane, 1814-1815. 
Frederick DePeyster, 1815-1816. 
Samuel Ferguson, 1815-18106. 
John Day, 1815-1816. 
William Heyward, 
1820-1829. 
Henry Jackson, 1815-1819. 
Garrit Van Horne, 1816-1817. 
Martin S. Wilkins, 1816-1819. 
John C. Clarkson, 1816-1817. 
Anthony Barclay, 1816-1817. 


1812- 


1815-1816, 


Whitehead Fish, 1817-1819. 

Robert G. L. DePeyster, 1817- 
1819. 

Augustus Grille, 1817-1819. 

James F. DePeyster, 1818-1830. 

William A. Hardenbrook, 1819- 
1824. 

Henry Brevoort, 1819-1821. 

Herman Thorn, 1819-1824, 1827- 
1831. 

James Renwick, 1819-1820. 

Isaac Lawrence, 1821-1825. 

George McKay, 1822-1830. 

Frederick W. Rhinelander, 1823- 
1828. 

Edward Martin, 1824-1825. 

Robert Cuthbert, 1824-1829. 

Noah Scovell, 1825-1827. 

Frederick DePeyster, Jr., 1825- 
1852. 

J. G. Russell, 1828-1832, 1838- 
1839. 

Gideon Lee, 1829-1836. 

Dr. A. V. Williams, 1829-1841. 

Dr. James McDonald, 1830- 
1841. 

William A. Davis, 1830-1831. 

Sidney A. Holly, 1831-1835. 

C. V. S. Kane, 1831-1832. 

John R. Schuyler, 1832-1834. 

Thomas Van Zandt, 1833-1835. 

James DePeyster, 1834-1837. 

Horace Waldo, 1834-1850. 

Abraham DePeyster, 1835-1837, 


Appendices 


Ira Ford, 1835-1838. 
George W. Smith, 1836-1838. 
Edward J. Swords, 1837-1847. 
William H. Howland, 1837- 
1850. 
William G. Buckner, 1838-1841. 
H. W. T. Mali, 1839-1862. 
William Whitlock, 1841-1854. 
Michael Yates, 1841-1843. 
James G. Stacey, 1843-1847. 
Richard L. Schieffelin, 1843- 
1845, 1847-1854. 
Frederick L. Talcott, 1845-1848. 
James Punnett, 1847-1867. 
John L. Wendell, 1848-1852. 
Albert McNulty, 1850-1865. 
David S. Jackson, 1850-1871. 
H.C. von Post, 1852-1856, 1865- 
1866. 
John Weyman, 1852-1857. 
William Whitlock, Jr., 1854- 


1858. 

Thomas A. Richmond, 1854- 
1860. 

Wm. P. Furniss, 1856-1859, 
1870-1872 


Charles S. Weyman, 1857-1866. 

Gustav Schwab, 1858-1866. 

Valentine Mott, 1859-1860. 

Dr. D. T. Brown, 1860-1872. 

H. H. Taylor, 1860-1863. 

D.S. Jackson, Jr., 1862-1873. 

Hermann Schréder, 1863-1865. 

Greenleaf K. Sheridan, 1865- 
1875. 

David H. Dick, 1866-1879. 

Frederick S. Heiser, 1866-1875. 


465 


James W. Coates, 1866-1870. 

George W. Ferguson, 1867- 
1892. 

George S. Stringfield, 1871-1876. 

W. R. Peters, 1872-1878. 

Charles H. Kitchel, 1872-1893. 

Byron S. Cotes, 1873-1886. 

Benjamin F. Tiemann, 1875- 
1881. 

William F. Chester, 1875-1879. 

Edward L. Tiemann, 1876-1895. 

Richard B. Tunstall, 1878-1884. 

Dr. Frederick T. Brown, 1879- 
1885. 

Charles E. Tripler, 1879-1894. 

Rev. Richard M. Hayden, 1881- 
181. 

Charles B. Meyer, 1884-1892. 

Charles M. Marsh, 1885-1888. 

Theodore V. Boynton, 1887- 
1888. 

Berrien Keyser, 1888-. 

Dr. Edward J. Ware, 1889- 
1904. 

John A. Beall, 1891-1900. 

Gilbert D. Case, 1892-. 

Harry B. Livingston, 1892-1905. 

J. B. Wilkinson, Jr., 1893-1902. 

Robert T. Bellchambers, 1894-. 

Isaac McGay, 1895-1897. 

A. A. Whitman, 1897-. 

John F. Pullen, 1898-1906. 

W. B. Goodwin, 1900-. 

Charles L. Case, 1903-. 

J. Woolsey Shepard, 1904-. 

Henry C. Stuart, rgo5-. 

Benjamin W. Wells, 1907-. 


APPENDIX D 


SECRETARIES OR CLERKS OF VESTRY 


William A. Davis, 1807-1812. 
Guy Carleton Bayley, 1812-1815. 
Henry Jackson, 1815-1818. 


William A. Davis, 1818-1823. 
Herman Thorn, 1823-1824. 
Edward Martin, 1824-1825. 


466 


Fred. DePeyster, Jr., 1825-1839. 
James McDonald, 1839-1841. 

A. V. Williams, 1841-1862. 

D. T. Brown, 1862-1878. 


Annals of St. Michael’s 


Tiemann, 1878-1894. 
ase, 1894-1904. 


E. L. 
G. D. 
A. A. Whitman, 1904-. 


APPENDIX E 


TREASURERS 


Robert T. Kemble, 1807-1810. 
Oliver H. Hicks, 1810-1815. 
Isaac Jones, 1815-1816. 


Henry Jackson, 1816-1818. 


James F. DePeyster, 1818-1874. 


William R. Peters, 1874-. 


APPENDIX F 


CLERGY OF ST. MICHAEL’S PARISH 


I. Rectors 


John Vanderbilt Bartow, 1808-ro. 


Samuel Farmar Jarvis. 1810-20. 


William Richmond, 1820-37; 1842-58. 


James Cook Richmond, 1837-42. 
Thomas McClure Peters, 1858-93. 


John Punnett Peters, 1893-. 


II. Assistants or Curates 


William Powell, 1819-21. 

Augustus Fitch, 1821-35. 

Manton Eastburn, 1823. 

E. D. Griffin, 1827. 

James Murray Forbes, 1832-33. 

James Cook Richmond, 1834-36 

William Richmond, 1837-42. 

William Morris, 1838-43. 

Caleb Clapp, 1839-40. 

James Sunderland, 1840. 

Thomas McClure Peters, 1847- 
58. 

J. D. Reid, 1863-64. 

John W. Payne, 1867-68. 

A. H. Warner, 1868-69. 

Caleb Theophilus Ward, 1869- 
93- 

R. Landsberger, 1878-80. 

J. Rockstroh, 1880-81. 


H. C. Mayer, 1881-82. 

Roland E. Grueber, 1881-85. 

Lawrence Henry Schwab, 1881- 
83. 

John Punnett Peters, 1883-93. 

Frank Draper, 1883-86. 

John S. Fawcett, 1885-88. 

G. W. Mayer, 1885-87. 

Montgomery H. Throop, Jr., 
1887-88. 


George Starkweather Pratt, 
1888-098. 

Arthur H. Warner, 1892-93. 

Mortimer T. Jefferis, 1894- 
IgoS. 


Francis McFetrich, 1894-96. 

Charles Lewis Biggs, 1896-1900. 
Arthur Wynne Shaw, 1899-1900. 
E. Vicars Stevenson, 1899-1902. 


Appendices 467 


Frederick W. Roberts, 1900-01. Appleton Grannis, 1902-05. 
Henry Harrison Hadley, t901- G.S.S. Richards, 1902-03. 


02. ; Sydney K. Evans 1903-05. 
James Bishop Thomas, 1902- Robert Philip Kreitler, 1906-. 
03. Burton Howard Lee, 1906-. 
APPENDIX G 


VARIOUS OFFICIALS OF ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH. 


Teacher of St. Michael’s Charity School, William Morgan, 1817-26. 
Parish Visitor, Miss Julia Peters, 1893-. 


Assistants to Treasurer 


Tylee W. Parker, 1890-93. Henry T. Edson, 1899-1903. 
Thomas A. Fulton, 1893-99. William H. Brumley, 1903- 
Partial List of Clerks of St. Michael’s Vestry 
Jarvis, 1810— Isaac Devoe, 1820— 
Wiggins, 1812- Jarvis, until 1832, if not 


Isaac Jones, 1815- later. 
Partial List of Organisis and Choir Masters 
Mrs. A.V. Williams(Miss Emeline Mrs. Thomas A. Richmond, 


Davis), to 1831. 1865-88. 
Alice Clarissa Richmond, 1842— Walter O. Wilkinson, 1888-94. 
Sarah Adelaide Adams, 1850. Robert T. Winterbottom, 1894—- 
(Rev.) Franklin Babbitt, 1851— Igoo. 
52. James Pearce, 1got. 
Mrs. McIntosh, 1853- William Neidlinger, 1902— 
Charles W. Meding, 1860— 
Chimers 
Walter O. Wilkinson, 1892-93. W. H. Dikeman, 1895-1900 
Oliver T. Holden, 1893-94. Thomas Angier Ayers, 1901— 
Partial List of Sextons of St. Michael's Church 
Armstrong, 1807— Charles Chitry, 1872-74. 
Martin Pabor, 1815-16. J. M. Bramman, Jr., 1874-80. 
Stewart, 1816— H. H. Jackson, 1880-81. 
Adam Thompson, 1836-50. S. J. Luckings, 1881— 


William Twine 1850-72. 
Assistant Sextons 


Edward T. Carr, 1884-92. John J. Ferguson, 1894-97. 
Emile T. Luckings, 1893-94. Wilfred C. Jarvis 1898- 
Engineers 


William Congleton, 1897- 


468 Annals of St. Michael’s 


APPENDIX H 


VITAL STATISTICS OF THE PARISH 


Compiled from Convention Journals and parish register, from 
the date of the organization of the church to the present time. 


Confir- Commu- 


Years. | Families. mations. Burials, | nicants. 
1808 

1809 4 52 
1810 5 50 
1811 2 20 
1812 4 30 
1813 2 36 
1814 2 

1815 4 30 
1816 2 26 
1817 2 26 
1818 3 27 
1819 I 

1820 Z 17 
1821 23 
1822 27 
1823 3° 
1824 30 
1825 20 
1826 2 25 
1827 2 27 
1828 5 25 
1829 5 60 
1830 I 60 
1831 4 50 
1832 2 55 
1833 6 50 
1834 5 60 
1835 ° 78 
1836 8 73 
1837 6 60 
1838 5 70 
1839 

1840 4 

1841 

1842 3 40 
1843 2 45 
1844 5 5° 
1845 2 

1846 5 

1847 8 

1848 3 

1849 2 


Appendices 469 


Confir- Commu- 
Families. mations, nicants. 


470 Annals of St. Michael’s 


Bap- Confir- Commu- 
Families.| tisms. | mations. Burials. | nicants. 
992 118 1325 
IOI2 1451 
I1i2 1652 
1127 1738 
goo 1400 
g2t 1516 
980 1604 
995 1619 
I197 1720 


APPENDIX I 


DELEGATES TO THE DIOCESAN CONVENTION REPRE- 
SENTING ST. MICHAEL’S PARISH 


The names of absentees are in italics. 


1807-8-9. Robert T. Kemble, Valentine Nutter. 

1810. Valentine Nutter, Isaac Jones. 

1811. Valentine Nutter, Isaac Jones, W. A. Davis. 

1812. Valentine Nutter, William A. Davis, Frederick DePeyster, 
Isaac Jones. 

1813. Valentine Nutter, William Rodgers, John Jackson. 

1814. Valentine Nutter, William Rodgers, Isaac Jones. 

1815. Valentine Nutter, William Rodgers. 

1816. Isaac Jones, Valentine Nutter, William Rodgers. 

1817. Valentine Nutter, William Rodgers, Isaac Jones. 

1818. Valentine Nutter, William A. Davis, Isaac Jones. 

1819. Isaac Jones, Valentine Nutter 

1820. Herman Thorn, Valentine Nutter, William A. Davis. 

1821. Herman Thorn, Valentine Nutter, Isaac Jones. 

1822. Isaac Jones, Valentine Nutter. 

1823. Valentine Nutter, William A. Davis, Herman Thorn. 

1824. Valentine Nutter, Edward Martin. 

1825. Valentine Nutter, William A. Davis, James F. DePeyster. 

1826. Valentine Nutter, James F. DePeyster. 

1827. Walentine Nutter, William A. Davis, James F. DePeyster. 

1828. Valentine Nutter, James F. DePeyster. 

1829. James F. DePeyster, Valentine Nutter. 


1830. 
1831. 


1832. 
1833. 
1834. 
1835. 
1836. 
1837. 
1837. 
1838. 
18309. 
1840. 
1841. 


1842. 
1843. 


1844. 
1845. 
1846. 
1847. 
1848. 
1849. 
1850. 
1851. 


1852. 
1853. 


1854. 


Appendices 471 


Valentine Nutter, James F. DePeyster. 

Gideon Lee, James F. DePeyster, Guy C. Bayley, Valentine 
Nutter. 

Valentine Nutter, Gideon Lee, James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. 
V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Dr. James Mc- 
Donald, Thomas Van Zandt. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. James McDonald, Thomas Van 
Zandt, Dr. A. V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Dr. James Mc- 
Donaid, Thomas Van Zandt. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. James McDonald, Dr. A. V. 
Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. James McDonald, Dr. A. V. 
Williams. 
Special Convention on Division of Diocese: James F. 
DePeyster, Dr. James McDonald, Dr. A. V. Williams. 
W.S. Buckner, James F. DePeyster, Dr. James McDonald, 
Dr. A. V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Frederick DePeyster, Dr. James Mc- 
Donald, W. S. Buckner, Dr. A. V. Williams. : 

James F. DePeyster, Frederick DePeyster, Dr. James Mc- 
Donald, Dr. A. V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. James McDonald, Michael Yates, 
Dr. A. V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Edward J. Swords, Dr. A. V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Edward J. Swords, Dr. A. V. Williams, 
H. Waldo. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Richard L. 
Schieffelin. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, T. L. Talcott, 
E. J. Swords, H. Waldo. 

James F. DePeyster, William Whitlock, Jr., William P. 
Furniss, Dr. A. V. Williams, Joseph P. Stacey. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, William P. Fur- 
niss, William Whitlock, John L. Wendell. 

James F. DePeyster, William P. Furniss, John L. Wendell- 

James F. DePeyster, John L. Wendell, Dr. A. V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, John L. Wendell. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, John L. Wendell. 

James F. DePeyster, James Punneti, Dr. A. V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Richard L. Schiejffelin, Dr. A. V- 
Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, David S. Jackson- 


472 


1855. 
1856. 
1857. 
1858. 
1859. 
1860. 
1861. 
1862. 
1863. 
1864. 
1865. 


1866. 
1867. 
1868. 
1869. 
1870. 
1871. 
1872. 
1873. 


1874. 
1875. 


1876. 


1877. 
1878. 


1879. 
1880. 
1881. 
1882. 
1883. 
1884. 
1885. 
1886. 
1887. 


1888. 


Annals of St. Michael’s 


James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Albert McNulty. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Albert McNulty. 

James F. DePeyster, Albert McNulty, Dr. A. V. Williams. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Albert McNulty. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Albert McNulty- 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Albert McNulty. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. A. V. Williams, Albert McNulty. 

James F. DePeyster, H. Taylor, Albert McNulty. 

James F. DePeyster, Albert McNulty, Charles S. Weyman. 

James F. DePeyster, Albert McNulty, Charles S. Weyman. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. D. Tilden Brown, Charles S. 
Weyman. 

James F. DePeyster, James Punnett, David H. Dick. 

James *. DePeyster, James Punnett, David H. Dick. 

James F. DePeyster, James Punnett, George W. Ferguson. 

James F. DePeyster, James Punnett, David H. Dick. 

James F. DePeyster, David H. Dick, George W. Ferguson. 

James F. DePeyster, David H. Dick, George W. Ferguson. 

James F. DePeyster, David H. Dick, Charles H. Kitchel. 

James F. DePeyster, Dr. D. Tilden Brown, Charles H. 
Kitchel. 

Dr. D. Tilden Brown, David H. Dick. 

Dr. D. Tilden Brown, Benjamin F. Tiemann, William F. 
Chester. 

Dr. D. Tilden Brown, Benjamin F. Tiemann, William F. 
Chester. 

Charles H. Kitchel, William F. Chester, George W. Ferguson. 

Charles H. Kitchel, William F. Chester, Richard B. Tun- 
stall. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Greenleaf K. Sheridan, Richard B. 
Tunstall. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Greenleaf K. Sheridan, Richard B. 
Tunstall. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Greenleaf K. Sheridan, Charles E. 
Tripler. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Greenleaf K. Sheridan, Charles E. 
Tripler. 

Greenleaf K. Sheridan, Charles H. Kitchel, Byron L. Cotes. 

Greenleaf K. Sheridan, Charles H. Kitchel, Byron L. Cotes. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Byron S. Cotes, Charles E. Tripler. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Byron S. Cotes, Charles E. Tripler. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Charles E. Tripler, Theodore V. 
Boynton. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Charles E. Tripler, Theodore V. Boynton. 


1889. 
18go. 


1891. 
1892. 
1893. 
1894. 


1895. 


1896. 
1897. 
1898. 
1899. 


1goo. 
IgOl. 
Ig0o2. 
1903. 
Ig04. 
1905. 
1906. 
1907. 


Appendices 473 


Charles H. Kitchel, Charles E. Tripler, Dr. Edward J. Ware. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Charles E. Tripler, Dr. Edward J. 
Ware. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Charles E. Tripler, John A. Beall. 

Charles H. Kitchel, Charles E. Tripler, John A. Beall. 

Charles E. Tripler, John A. Beall, Dr. Edward J. Ware. 

John A. Beall, Joseph B. Wilkinson, Jr., Dr. Edward J. 
Ware. 

John A. Beall, Joseph B. Wilkinson, Jr., Dr. Edward J. 
Ware. 

John A. Beall, Joseph B. Wilkinson, Jr., H. B. Livingston. 

John A. Beall, Joseph B. Wilkinson, Jr., Charles E. Tripler. 

John A. Beall, Joseph B. Wilkinson, Jr., Charles E. Tripler. 

John A. Beall, Dr. Edward J. Ware, Joseph B. Wilkinson, 
Jz: 

John A. Beall, Dr. Edward J. Ware, Joseph B. Wilkinson, Jr. 

John A. Beall, Berrien Keyser, William B. Goodwin. 

John A. Beall, Berrien Keyser, William B. Goodwin. 

John A. Beall, William R. Peters, Gilbert D. Case. 

Dr. Edward J. Ware, Berrien Keyser, Gilbert D. Case. 

Dr. Edward J. Ware, Berrien Keyser, J. Woolsey Shepard. 

W. R. Peters, Dr. Edward J. Ware, J. Woolsey Shepard. 

Berrien Keyser, Benjamin W. Wells, J. Woolsey Shepard. 


INDEX 


A 


Abbey Hotel, 12 

Adams, John L., 428 

Advent Mission, 159 

All Angels’ Church, go, 95 7., 
99 7., 103, 105, 131, 179 f., 
248, 297 77-» 302, 386 7., 393 i7-» 
405, 447, 449, 452 

All Souls’ Church, 408 7. 

Altar, 146, 163, 182 7., 336 

Altar Guild, 171 

Amsterdam Avenue Fight, 200 


ie 
Anthon, Henry, 86 7., 256 
Architect, ror, 151, 166, 187 7. 


B 


Babbitt, Franklin, 1o1, 123 

Babylonian Exploration, 368 ff. 

Bailey, Guy Carleton, 120, 122 

Bartow, John Vanderbilt, 22, 30, 
227 ff, 438 

Beall, John A., 205, 209 

Berkeley Society, 364 

Bethlehem Chapel, 144, 159 f., 
324, 367, 404 f. 

» Black, Hiram, 444 

Bloemendael, 3 

Bloomingdale, 3 f., 6, 20, 36, 46, 
80 ff., 108 ff., 128, 136, 144 
HEAT f-> LOt f., 386 

Bloomingdale Asylum, 46, 71 7f., 
77, 69, 112, 114, 129, 244 f-, 
262, 296, 386, 390, 396 

Bloomingdale Day Nursery, 192, 


428 ff. 
Bloomingdale District Nurse 
Association, 436 f. 


475 


Bloomingdale Library, 188, 431, 


Bloomingdale Reformed Church, 

‘ PREG I. 

Bloomingdale Road, 5, 88, ro f., 
I127., 124, 126, 132, 144, 146, 
166 7., 177, 444 

Board of Missions, 89, 96, 240 
250, 257, 278 

Boys’ Guild, 154, 170 

Brooks, Arthur, 330, 367, 405 

Brooks, Phillips, 367 

Brotherhood of St. Andrew, 154, 
170, 336 

Brower, Charles DeH., 220 

Brown, D. T., 112, 156, 301, 386, 
397, 424, 440, 452, 454 

Brownell, T. C., 235, 240 f., 280, 


- £ 


204 i 
Burns, Mrs. Clarence, 434, 436 
Cc 


Cadle, 9, 19 

CATIL, r8o, 197 f- 

Carey incident, 86 
Carmansville, 96, 120, 125, 386, 


390 
Carpenter, Matthew H., 268 
Cathedral, 78, 130, 164, 179, 210, 

325, 373, 408 
Catholic Oak, 264 7., 267 
Cemetery, 100, 137, 143, 145; 

LAs Ese. 16L, P72) J) LOO; 

331, 336, 397, 416, 427, 438 7f- 
Central Park, 81, 87 7j., 90 77-, 

105, 123 j-, 125, 142, 160, 239, 

393 ff-» 406, 445 7f- 

Chapel of the Angels, 107, 167, 

182, 186, 256, 337, 444 


476 Index 


Children’s Fold, 111, 148, 174, 
326 ff-. 333, 414 

Chitry, Alvira, 185 

Choir, 52, 85, 123, 130, 133, 150, 
152, 159, 163, 190 

Cholera, 707., 95, 249, 292, 384/f., 


447 
Christ Church, 14, 257., 46, 48, 
8 


5 
Church of the Advent, 406 
mene of the Archangel, 160, 
325, 405 ff- 
Church of the Holy Name, 126, 
178, 210, 213, 215, 430 
Church of the Intercession, 96, 


39° 
Church of the Redeemer, 239, 


392 

Church Deas Redemption, 73, 
75 ’ 

Church of the Transfiguration, 
84, 133, 364, 458 

City Mission Society, 68 77., 88, 
90, 137, 140, 142, 174, 224, 
243 ff., 249, 301, 306, 310ff., 
326, 333, 336, 339, 386, 395, 
404 7., 410 ff., 419 f., 422, 
426, 447, 450, 459 

Claremont, 12, 377 7. 

Clarkson, 9, 116 7., 237 

Clay, Henry, 241 } 

Clendining, 121, 427 

Clendining, Lane By hts Ado; 
442 f., 445, 454 

Clerks, 22, 32, 37; 52, 55 

Clinic, 172, 190, 427 f. 

Clothing Bureau, 192 

Coleman, Leighton, 300, 336 

Collect Pond, 16 

Columbia University, 46, 210 

Committee of One Hundred, 221 

Communion service, 151, 427 

Communicants, 37, 128 f., 146, 
159, 164, 223, 246 

Confirmation, 38, 129, 159, 291 

Cooper, Rev., 21 f. 

Court life, 293 

Cowley, Edward, 326 ff. 

Croker, Richard, 211, 216, 218 

Croton Aqueduct, Sr far rss 045, 
443 


D 


Davis, William A., 9, 13, 23, 41; 
525 ae 


Delafield, 119, 442 

DePeyster family, 114 7f., 442 f. 

DePeyster, Frederick, 9, 12, 19, 
24, 36, 114 ff. 

DePeyster, Frederick, Jr., 36, 
52, 115 f., 390 

DePeyster, James Ferguson, 36, 
58, 67, 100;\0E4 haere 
384, 440, 454 

DePeyster, Nicholas, 5 

DePeyster, Robert G. L., 9, 114 


Division of Diocese, 80, 175, 316 
ff-» 334 

Dix, Morgan, 339, 353 ff-» 426 

Dunscomb, 9, 23, 30 


E 


Eidlitz, Leopold, 15x 7. 
Elmwood, 13, 112 f. 
Embargo, 15, 35 


F 


Fackler, St. Michael, 253 
Federation of Churches, 195/., 
200, 407, 434 
Finances, 23}-, 30 His 3 Ove 2 
67, 83 ff:, 10x, 23m bse oe 
167, ee ee 223 f-» 456 

Finlay, 44, 378 7., 381, 444 

Fitch, Augustus, 77, 104, 390 

Five Points, 17, YS) foe OGM Eaie 
246 f. 

Font, 96, 153, 172, 183 

Forbes, James M., 71, 390 

Ford, John, 205, 209, 215, 221 

Fort Washington, 44, Fe 92, 96, 
120, 232, 238, 380, 4 

Free Church, 69 f., Ae 80, 88 
f-> 97, 100}, Togs nse, maae 180 
7. 190, 243 f., 245 ff-., 266, 299 
7-, 335 384, 396 ff, 410, 447, 


449 f. 

Fulton, Thomas A., 203, 205, 
210 

Furniss, 112, 123, 168, 278 


G 


Geer, G. J., 

General Thealogieal Seminary, 
48, 81, 86, 101, 232, 289, 291, 
294, 363, 412 


eS 


Index 


German services, 76 f., 135, 143, 
158 f., 262, 295, 321, 323, 367, 
387, 404 f. 

Gibson, R. W., 166, 188 

Girls’ Friendly Society, 171, 192 

Good Government Club B, 201, 


203 
Grace Church, 17, 25, 28, 48, 68, 
Serer S, ©L5G, 235, 243, 300, 
315, 410 
Greek Mission, 259 
Groshon, T. C., 381, 383, 392 f. 
Guest, 129 f., 182, 415 


H 


Haarlaem, see Harlem 

Elamimlton. 1m, £5, £7, 20, 120, 
381 

Hamilton Square, 29, 41 

Hamiltonville, 236 

Harlem, 3, 51, 69, 78, 83, 108, 
E20, 125, 239 f-, 325, 380 f-, 
383, 392 f-, 407 

Harsenville, 83, 125 

Hawkes, Frank L., 98, 240, 319 

Hayden, R. M., 130 

Hicks, Oliver H., 7, 9 f., 14, 21, 
23, 122, 166, 439 

Hilliard, S. H., 301 f., 362, 419 

Hinton, G. L., 51, 69 f., 239 F-, 
383 f-, 392 7. 

Hobart, John Henry, 9, 19, 39; 
Mig 47-507, Si, 235, 237 

Hoffman, Charles F., 398 f. 

Hogan, Michael, 9, 12, 377 /. 

Holy Communion Church, 28, 
89 7f., 132 f-, 445, 447, 455 

Horse cars, 83, 125 

Houghton, George, 133 f. 

House of Mercy, 104, 106, 109, 
129, 137, 255, 302 ff-, 338 Tf 


.__ 365, 397, 416 ff, 423 
House of Rest, 148, 164, 174, 
325, 333, 456 


Howland, William H., 109, 417 
Hudson River Railroad, 83 7., 
122, 125 


I 


Independent Club, 205, 219 ff. 
Infant Asylum, 138, 306, 4197. 


477 


J 
Jackson, David S., 


TenGIH eye, 

Jarvis, Samuel Farmar, 31 7., 
45, 49 f., 62, 230 ff., 238, 389, 
391 

Jauncey Lane, 5, 92, 112, 416 

Jauncey William, 7, 10, 13, 113 

Jefferis, M. T., 365 

Jones, Isaac, 9, 13, 21, 30, I10 

Jones, Joshua, 13, 19, 24, 30 


K 
Kemble, Robert T., 7 ff., 12, 21, 


23, 122 
Keyser, Berrien, 431 f. 
Keyser, Harriette A., 197 
Keyser, Robert B., 189 
Kitchel, Charles H., 172 


L 


Lamb Ri b= 182 

Leake and Watts Asylum, 81, 
Entei 2O) jase THOM pC kay e070 
179, 296, 397, 415 

Lee, Gideon, 118, 410 

Lehmaier, Louis A., 213 

Livingston, Mrs. H. B., 184 

Livingston, 109, 111, 1167., 120, 
184 

Lorillard, Jacob, 120, 381 

Loving Service Society, 192 

Low, Elizabeth, 184 

Luckings, S. J., 185, 201 7., 205 

Lyceum Hall, 144, 147 f., 170, 
187, 427 


I00, 102, 


M 


McBarron, John D., 428 
McKay, George, 109 f. 
McNulty, Albert, ro9, 155 
McNulty, Albert, Jr., 312 
McVickar, John, 13, 24 

Mali, H. W. T., 100, 102, 109, 


155 

Manhattanville, 36, 44, 46, 40, 
OS jp sU7Os 1035 8225 025, £33, 
136, 232, 293, 298, 301, 377 Th, 

Meier, Caspar, 110, 388 

Men’s Guild, 192 


478 


Merry, Carles T., 187 f. 

Messenger, 155, 188 

Midnight Mission, 306, 418 f. 

Mission to Public Institutions, 
90; 1035, 220, N23 yay ease 
249, 205 ff» 310, 312 ff-» 334, 
384, 392, 408 7., 423 

Montgomery, 329, 340 Tf 423 

Moore, Benjamin, 8, 35, 39, 41, 
81, 227 

Morgan, William, 62, 65 

Morgan, William F., 312,347,349 

Morris, William, 77, 262 

Mother Harriet, 139, 303, 305, 
310, 341, 357 Tf. 

Mothers’ Meetings, 192 

Mott family, rrx f. 

Mount Minturn, 328 7., 335 

Muhlenberg, Dr., 89 f., 99, 133, 
303 f., 307, 420, 448 


N 


ee George L.,, 104, 2977., 


6 7. 
NEeEbotood Club, 433 ff- 
New ar Free School Society, 


59 ff, 61 f. 
Now ae Orphan Asylum, 17, 


Soin Os siya Tei ACO, 
299, 395, 397 

Nutter, Valentine, 9, 13, 21, 23, 
379 439 


O 


Onderdonk, Benjamin T., 67, 69, 
72,77, 81, 86 ff., 245, 265, 319, 
410 

Openhym, Mrs. Adolphe, 436 

Oregon, Mission to, 96, 99, 106, 


249 ff.» 297, 386 
Organ, (S2e57 OLA SOL Se. 
168, 337 


Organist, 52, 82, 85, Ior, 123, 


254 
Oxford Movement, 85, 90, 133, 
291, 335 


12 


Parish Aid, 171 
Parish House, 165, 172, 185 ff, 


211, 224, 337) 427 if- 
Parish Schoois, 40, 59, 62 f., 66, 
133, 136, 300 f., 362, 402, 440 


Index 


eke Ae Church, 126, 


Pasion Tylee W., 157 
Penny ‘Provident Fund, 171 
ee oe D., 279 f., 283 


iis 
Paes ee er D., 279 f., 


283 ff. +» 293, 2 
me Pe PP; ee f., 169, 177 


Beene Se John P., 192, 430 

Peters, Julia, 338 

Peters, Lucretia, 425 

Peters, Thomas M., 89 ff., 112, 
128 ff., 180, 183, 185 7f., 248 f., 
255, 279 ff-, 362 f., 385 if -, 394 

-) @LL fieaonie 

Peters, Mrs. Thomas M., 89, 184, 
248, 204, 337, 362 

Peters, William R., 156, 166, 
188, 209, 256, 362, 426, 455 ff. 

Pewholders, 10, 11, 36, 57, 67, 
70, 78, 80, 97, 99, 441 

Pew-rents, 10, 36 7., 67, 73 7ff-, 
84, 100, 180 7., 244, 383 f., 410 

Phelps, Charles E. , 298, 395 

ne Divinity Sciook 
367 

Poole, Mrs. George E., 434, 436 

Poor Relief, 147 

Potter, Alonzo, 280, 293 f. 

Potter, Henry C., 159, 168, 336, 
347, 369, 401 

Potter, Horatio, 102, 1387., 159, 
305, 312, 315 ff-» 339 364, 423 

Potters’ Field, 46, 438, 446, 451 

Pratt, George S., 169, 408 

Prevost, J. L., 130 

Prime, Nathaniel, 13 7. 

Provoost, Samuel, 34 f., 81 

Public School No. 9, 65 

Public Schools, 17, 58 7f., 63 f., 
95, 125, 188 f., 203, 213, 425, 


429 f. 

Public School Society of New 
York, 58 ff., 440 

Pulpit, 185, 380 f. 

Punnett, James, 110, 146, 155, 
301, 302, 310, 386, 388, 397, 
424, 448 


R 


Ravenscroft, John S., 243 
Reid, J. D., 136 


Index 


Renwick, 118 7. 

Rhinelander, 13, 19, 110, 119 

Richmond, James Cook, 67, 73, 
76 ff-. 79, 184, 245, 247 7f-s 
a 257 Tf-» 290 f-» 385, 393, 


mene, Katharine S., 278, 


424 
Richmond, Mrs. Sarah A., 104, 
137 f-» 254 ff-» 302 f-» 338, 416 


Richmond, Sarah S.., 277 f-> 424 
“ia Thomas A., 155, 397; 


Rcnaiond, William, 42, 45 if- ne 
62 7., 67 ff-. 79 ff-» 117, 127]. 
130, 137, 147, 173, 234 ff» 
257, 261 ff., 289, 294 ff-, 301 F., 
322, 379 ft» 389 ff-» 393» 4025 
409, 411, 416 

Richmond, William, Second, 

278 

Ringwood Mission, 149 7. 

Rodgers, William, 7 ff., 12, 112 

Roome, Constance Caroline, 184 


Ss) 


St. Agnes’s Chapel, 112, 164, 179 


St. Agnes’s Guild, 154, 171, 184 

St. Andrew’s Church, 51, 58, 69 
7, 96, 159, 240, 390, 392 fF. 
406, 459 

St. Ann’s Church, 50, 71, 77, 96, 
238, 262, 389 ff. 

St. <a Se dee House, 137 ff-, 
305 7., 309, 356, 418 f., 426 

St. Cocilis Guild, 171 - 

St. Faith’s Guild, 170 

St. George’ s Church, 14,18,25f., 
28, 99, 227, 382 

(opts James’ s Church, 18, 25, 29, 31 
fi. 40, 44, 48, 50 ff, 56, 62, 78 
i. a 231.2237 fF = ae 
262 7., 289, 385, I 

St. ein Seon: 3 68, 


st. + ohn’ s, Dresden, 366 
St. Luke’s Hospital, 139, 179, 


a 303 7, 338, 420, 448 77. 


st Mark's Church, 14 7., 22, 25 
ff-, 32, 70, 86 


479 


St. Mary’s Church, 20, 30, 49, 
63, 69 f.. 73, 77 fF» 89, 96, 99, 
131 ff., 146, 148, 238 f., 243 ff.» 
247 ff-» 255, 262, 289, 294 
297 ifs 320, 377 fi-» 392 f-, 402, 
406, 411, 444, 455, 458 

St. Mary’s, Hamiltonville, 236 

St. Matthew’s Church, 60, 88 7., 
160, 239, 327, 391 f-, 405 

St. Michaei’s Annex, 160, 406 

St. Michael’s Charity School, 
409, 51, 54, 56, 58, 60 ff. 440 

St. Michael’s Free Church 
ee TOS, 2131, 546,209, 
388, 3 

St. Stebbens Ss ‘Church, 14, 17,19, 
27, 58, 87, 228 

St. Thomas’s Church, 58, 99, 309, 


312 

St. Timothy’s Church, 76, 96 /7., 
190, 262, 297, 402 ff., 458 

Schermerhorn, Peter, ro, 13, 30 

Scheurer, Christian, 455 

Schieffelin, Jacob, 9, 11, 14, 46, 


49, II0, 121, 377 ff-» 439 
eee R. iD IOI, 110, 380, 


Speer Gustav, 110, 156 

Searchlight, 191 f. 

Seneca village, 87, 248, 261, 393, 
446 

Sewing School, 170, 193 

Sexton, 32, 37, 55, 85, IOI, 136, 
146, 158, 438 

Seymour, George F., 
362, 365 f., 418 

Sheltering Arms, 138 ff-, 146, 
174, 224, 278, 302, 304 fl 326 
fi-» 333> 336, 338 77-, 382, 388, 
414, 420 7f., 450, 459 

Seas Arms Bazaar, 


168, 336, 


aa 399) 
Shottenan Arms Paper, 330, 343, 


425 
Shepherd’s Fold, 148, 170, 326 
Ti-+ 333, 339) 415 
Sister Sarah, 305, 353, 423, 427 
Sisters, 137 7f., 303 1f-» 399 7-» 338 
» 418 7., 423 7-, 42 
Slavery, 40, 228 
Smith, William Alexander, 310, 
I2, 425 
Sotial B Reform Club, 433 7. 
Stevenson, Dr. Thomas, 427 {. 
Striker’s Bay, 4, 111 7. 


480 


Sunday School, 47, 89, 131 f., 
136, 141, 146 f., 149, 158, 164 
f., 183; 191, 193, 224 f., 248, 
249, 261, 281 f., 284 7., 287, 
383, 385, 404 f., 430 7., 433, 
442, 446 


a 


Thayer, Obed, 445 

Throop, Montgomery H., Jr., 
I60, 406 

Tiemann, Daniel F., 135, 147, 
152, 386 

Tiemann, E. L., 156, 166, 455 f. 

Tiemann, Peter C., 301, 304, 386, 


397 ; 
Tiffany, Louis, 184 
Tracey, J. C., 96 f., 402 f. 
Treat, Charles R., 407 
Trinity Chapel, 98, 123, 309, 364 
Trinity Church, 7, 19, 23, 25 ff., 
PLOY fies GASH Shee SA Icy (ID hey tenes 
88758: fs) Li4,) 204, L700 L-, 
224, 228, 232, 298, 305, 309, 
381, 385, 390, 398, 450, 458 
Trinity Church, Oregon, 253, 409 
Trinity School, 77, 179, 262 
Tupper, Martin F., 250 


U 


University of Pennsylvania, 368, 


Vv 


Vandenheuvel, John Cornelius, 
13, 118 


Index 


Van Horne, Garrit, 8, 12, 111, 
I17, 298, 362 

Vaults, 115, 119, I2I, 439, 441 
ff. 455 

von Post, H. C., 100, rro, 156, 
184 

W 

Wagstaff, 58, 119, 442 

Wainwright, Jonathan M., 98, 
243, 250, 206 f., 316, 392, 410 

Waldo, 109, 442 

Ward, C. T., a 153, 425 

Ware, E. J., 


Weyman, Ghastee S. . 184 
Weyman, William, 58, 109, 440, 


442 
Whitlock, William, 109, 384 
Williams, A. V., 52, 63, 79, I00, 

102, 105, LEZ, L2a ya eee 

301, 321, 384, 394, 397, 443, 


454 

Windows, 20, 130, 152, 167, 169, 
182 ff. 337 

Women’s Guild, 192 

Wood, Fernando, 126, 135 


ive 


Year Book, 154, 429, 431 

Yellow fever, 6, 56, 108 

Yorkville, 41, 50 f., 62 ff., 76 f., 
79, I10, 239, 248, 262, 391 


Z 
Zion Church, 18, 48, 58, 70, 75, 


79 f-, 87, 97 ff-» 190, 228, 246 
-» 403 


